Final Exam, or: The Ballad of Vada IV
by Patchwork Poltergeist
Summary: Elite Purple's not surprised when the Tallest gives him a special final assessment. He's not surprised to go solo, either. Invaders work alone, like it or not. (And he doesn't.) But something feels off about the place she assigned. It seems almost... nice. He didn't expect that part. Heads up, Elite. Time to see if you've got what it takes to be an Invader. And all that entails.
1. People Lose Arms All The Time

And so there you were: the bright-eyed and bloody-toothed Irken Elite, a sprightly hundred and thirty-four, and kind of a big deal.

That's not arrogance or vanity, pal, that's a fact. It's no stretch to say you were one of the biggest stars on Devastis. Maybe they knew you from the broadcasts. Maybe they remembered you from the time you gutted their backwater hamlet or mid-tier metropolis during your climb to the top of the Elite. Or maybe they had your collector card (holofoil, double-sided). Maybe they owned the Ripper you borrowed—that's BORROWED, not stole—that one time and they couldn't let go of the past. Pretty unhealthy way to live a life, in your opinion.

On the chance that they didn't know you by your _more _than respectable six feet and ten inches (not counting antennae), then they knew you by your eyes. You'd been told multiple times by multiple Irkens of multiple heights, plus three Vortians, five Plookesians, and one grudgingly awed Planet Jacker that you had a beautiful set of purple eyes. They were all correct. However, if they didn't know you on sight, then they knew you by name, rank, or reputation. Name matched the eyes; not hard to put together.

If somehow they _still _didn't know you from all that, then they at least knew your partner's reputation. From day one, Red had made it his personal business to be sure everyone on every square foot of the planet knew who he was, whether by high scores or broken bones. Usually both. Everyone needed a hobby.

The point is, when Purple of the Irken Elite stepped into the room, heads turned. Or rolled, depending on the situation.

Thus, when _The Indomitable _landed during the first leg of finals and Almighty Tallest Miyuki requested your presence, it surprised you… but not much.

Meeting her alone meant Red got stuck waiting outside. That part bothered you more than you'd like to admit. The two of you had been working together for so long, it felt like losing a limb. Not a big deal—limbs grew back and complaining wouldn't make it grow faster—but it still felt weird and wrong, and you had to relearn how to do everything in the meantime.

Without Red by your side, you suddenly had a lot more empty space to work with. Nobody walked with you down the long corridors. Nobody laughed when you had to pull yourself up and into the chair two sizes too big for you. Nobody stood in the wings to back you up in case something went wrong.

And there was a very good chance something had already gone wrong.

No matter the Era, no matter your rank or height, there are only two reasons an Almighty Tallest requests a personal audience: good and bad. If you can walk away with all your body parts, count it as a good reason.

Spotlighted alone in Almighty Tallest Miyuki's office, you tried to search her face for which reason it might be. You couldn't meet her eyes for long, but for the few seconds you managed it, she was unreadable. Normal. Good sign. Probably. …Maybe.

It had started decently enough. Exchanged formal greetings, offered your utmost gratitude for the privilege of breathing her air, thanked her when she offered the opportunity to sit.

Miyuki rose from her desk, clasped her hands behind her back, and watched. Didn't stare—sweet Irk, you'd have collapsed into a schmillion pieces if she'd _stared _. No, she just… watched, the same way one watches an old data file. Occasionally, she blinked.

Shifting in your seat and watching both feet dangle in the air, you realized that you'd forgotten to shine your boots. They still had scuffs and blood on them from the arena match. Had The Tallest noticed? Stupid question, of course she had. She noticed everything.

You glanced at the skull collection on her shelf, trying your best not to eyeball the pocky in her pocket. What was that, strawberry? Sure looked like it. But sometimes raspberry could be pink too, so maybe raspberry? Blood was also pink. They didn't make blood flavored pocky did they? That'd be weird. Everyone said that Miyuki's Favored Snack came in all sorts of flavors, so blood could be possible. You didn't know how flavors worked with pocky, but you'd have sure liked to find out. The texture seemed delicate, and the colors were layered on top, so it had to be frosted or—

Wait, was Miyuki talking?

When did that happen? How long had she been talking?

"…impressive kill-count precedes you, Elite." The Tallest spared a glance out of the ship's window. Red paced along landing dock, practicing his shock spear jabs and ignoring the knot of smallers watching him. "As do your…unorthodox methods. You've chosen a strange time in your career for an allied strategy. I'd understand if it was solely for Elite training, but you're both preparing to become Invaders. Invaders work alone."

"Yes, ma'am."

Red himself had made that clear every ten minutes the first year of your alliance. Every few weeks after the alliance became a partnership. Then, every six months after the partnership shifted into… whatever the two of you eventually became. (Even now, you're not sure what the word for it is.)

"It's not permanent," he still told you—or himself—every now and then.

You'd never understood why he bothered. Nothing was ever permanent.

Before your Elite encoding, you were a Soldier, a Cadet, a smeet, and a chunk of flesh floating in a jar. At least a third of your missions specialized in espionage and information extraction; any given time on any given planet, you could "be" lots of people. Twenty years ago, you were a Foodcourtian insurgent dedicated to reclaiming the galaxy's best snacking hub and flipping it back to… whatever Foodcourtia was before Irk improved it. Twelve years ago, the Screw Heads knew you as a gentle Irken defective on the lam from the mean old Irken Empire who'd only wanted peace (and also tech secrets). Those missions were what bumped you into Invader training in the first place.

The past few years, you'd been the smoke bomb guy, the sniper guy, and on really fun days, the rip-out-a-spine-and-wear-it-like-a-scarf guy. The guy who sipped slushies while sweeping the area. The guy everyone knew and liked because you were easy to like. You had the face and the height for it.

It'd been nice being yourself. Even nicer being yourself with Red.

"You've become quite accustomed to each other," Miyuki continued. "In fact, I can't recall seeing the two of you apart for most of the last decade."

It took every ounce of your self-control not to smirk. "Well, yeah. We like winning." Stats and reputation spoke for themselves, and yours could talk for hours. "Teamwork's within protocol, and if it works, it works."

"It's a cute gimmick, but I wonder what you intend to do once you graduate."

"Um. My job? What else would I do?"

Miyuki raised an eyebrow, and the rest of the question became clear: _what do you intend to do without Red? _

Again, she watched you. This time, you tilted your head up to meet her gaze.

"I intend to do _my job _, My Tallest. I've worked solo before; I can do it again if I have to." You shrugged as if you could split the team right then and never look back. At the time, maybe you believed that you could. "It is what it is."

"And that's all? No plans, no future ambitions?"

"What's there to plan? It's not like I can choose where I'm assigned. Besides, plans change as soon as you make 'em. I think it's better to just, you know, be prepared for whatever happens. Handle the future when it gets here."

That said, you had a good guess where it went from there: graduation, celebration, and a tag-team bar fight for old times' sake. Become an Invader. Grind a few planets beneath your boot. Rule over whatever rock you'd conquered, and earn a cushy title if you conquered it well. Presuming you didn't die first.

Where Red fit into all that, you couldn't say. Thinking about it too long got your squeedlyspooch feeling all gunky, so you didn't think of it. Or anything else, really.

"That's good to hear, Elite Purple." Slowly, Tallest Miyuki nodded and smiled. A blink-and-you'll-miss-it incline of the head, a centimeter of mouth twitch. Small smiles were the safe smiles. You were _almost _definitely not in trouble. "Because I've come to administer your final exam."

The word shot out before you could stop it. "Why?"

Miyuki narrowed her eyes.

Awesome. Open mouth, insert plasma rifle.

"Um. That is, it's kinda… unusual, isn't it? Finals are in the simulation pods. You can assign and monitor those from anywhere." Both antennae perked up as it clicked. "…Unless mine isn't."

"No, it is not." In one smooth motion, Miyuki slipped a pocky stick between her teeth and handed you what appeared to be a collapsible thermos. "Your assignment is Vada IV, a sister moon in orbit of Vada Prime."

Vada Prime, huh? It had been a couple years since your last map check, but that sounded like Meekrob territory. Totally different solar system, but still within the same star cluster. Too close for your taste. Rumor had it the Meekrob had gotten their telepathic tentacles in a twist and started casting their psychic nets farther and farther out from their home planet.

"Guess I'm taking the long way around." Annoying, but getting your head exploded into handsome chunks probably wouldn't get an S-Rank. Invasions required stealth landings anyway, so sure. "Exploding the place is probably out too, huh?"

The pocky bobbed between the Tallest's teeth as she snapped off a piece. "Not unless you plan to blend in with a smoldering pile of ashes, no. My Empire has more than enough rubble heaps, thank you. It's standard Invader protocol; location aside, the rules of the test stay the same."

Which still sounded weird to you. If the rules didn't change, then… After a quick guesstimate of Miyuki's mood versus your inherent value as a soldier, you decided to err on caution. "Permission to request further information, My Tallest?"

She snapped up the rest of the pocky in two bites. "Granted."

"In that case, what is the point of risking valuable Irken resources in the field?" Namely, you. "It sounds harder to monitor progress, especially when the testing site covers a whole planet—"

"Moon. Call it a special case for a special soldier." The smile returned, wider this time. "The natives possess a rhythmic language with a specific cadence and speech pattern. As of now, it's too complicated for the translation algorithm, and your PAK data from the time on Vada IV will help write a new one."

"Huh. Not that I'm ungrateful, My Tallest, but is there a reason you've selected me and not a researcher or like a… language-type guy?"

The Tallest moved closer and beckoned you to stand. "You've something of a given talent—a decommissioned encoding found in rare numbers now." She leaned over you and tapped the side of your PAK with a fresh pocky stick. "You're what they call an old soul, Elite. A war poet, to be exact."

"Oh."

Louder than its newer, shinier peers, the PAK between your shoulder blades hummed and clicked and whirred through the daily grind of keeping you alive. An appraiser told you once it came from Era 21. Before you were Purple, you used to be someone else. Before that someone else, you were another someone else, and another before that. It's a thought you hadn't really considered until then.

You'd never heard of a poet before, but you already knew what one was. Someone who made things out of words that sounded nice together, and war poets used those nice words to praise and honor the Empire. Like what The Announcer did, but fancier. Maybe Era 21 didn't have Announcers.

Tallest Miyuki nodded her approval. "Try a stanza."

A little surprised to already know what a stanza was, you bounced on your heels, trying to think.

"Uhhh… I think it would sure be a sham/If I went out and bombed my exam/But these rhymes do not blow/And that's how I know/That a winner is what I still am—OH man, lookit me! I'm a war poet!" For extra flair, at the end you added some pitch and what you suddenly understood was a "melody". Together, those things made a "song". Neat!

This called for another verse. (Songs had verses, not stanzas.) "Okay, here's another one: I once knew a guy in Foodcourtia/Who ate a grenade on the floor-ia/I just had to lament/'Cause that's not what I meant/When I said that I'd like to see more of ya. Oh—oh, wait I have a better one—"

"No. No, that's alright. I believe you." The Tallest sighed. It was a very long sigh. "You're a natural, Elite Purple, as expected." She lifted a finger before you opened your mouth again. "You can stop now."

"Yes, My Tallest." Verses two through twenty would just have to wait. Oh well, genius couldn't be rushed.

"Do you—hm." Miyuki spared a glance at a table drone who'd come scuttling up during your amazing performance. She took the bubble tea from his head, broke off the end of a pocky stick and… dropped it.

She dropped it right into the drone's waiting little tiny glove. On purpose. That two-foot nothing got almost _a third _of a stick while you—you, the golden egg of the Irken Elite—were stuck staring at forbidden pocky in holograms! And did that twerp _wink _at you on his way out? The world had no justice sometimes.

Miyuki cradled the bubble tea and gently sipped it. "Do you have any more questions?"

"Yes, actually. Not complaining about lunch, but what's with the fancy therm—WAUGH!"

A pair of legs dangled out of your thermos, which was something that a thermos was almost definitely not supposed to do. The Maybe-Not-A-Thermos stretched to grow a torso. And two arms. A pair of ocular sensors the color of Miyuki's robes blinked out of what you now realized was a head all along.

"Oh. Well. That answers my question."

The blue oculars adjusted themselves, trying to focus from the awkward position in your grip. "Good afternoon, Master! I'm detecting some audial distress. How are you feeling today?"

Weird thing to ask someone. Talking to robots didn't feel right, especially when a Tallest stood in the room. You looked to her for guidance, but Miyuki only gestured for you to continue. "I'm… fine?"

"Great!" It smiled when you put it down. "Say, would you like to know about the flora and fauna native to Devastis?"

"Stuff lives on Devastis? Besides us?"

Apparently so. A screen popped out of the robot's shiny little head and skimmed through a list of funguses, mosses, bugs, and all the death-beasts that lived in the coliseum. It sorted all of them into one of two columns. A third listed just one species: Irkens; Class 9 Sapient Life.

"This," Miyuki told you, "is a prototype designed to gather information vital to your mission, in addition to providing mental stimulation and well-being. The Companion Information Retrieval unit, or C.I.R for short. You asked me how you would be monitored." She nodded to the robot, who waved back. "There you are. Your PAK and home base will provide additional surveillance."

"Good afternoon!" The C.I.R. chirped. "Would you like to hear a funny joke?"

"No thank you." Though she seemed to consider it. "That's all for now. Mute, please."

Not a second too soon. Robots ought to be seen, not heard. And away from you. Robots got in everyone's business, never shut up, and weren't even fun to eviscerate. In any case, you had no use for a unit right this second. "Go ahead of me and prepare _The Famished _. And wipe your feet; I don't need dirt in my ship."

A prototype meant it was still in testing, which meant it could have bugs to work out, which meant getting in your way. But that was Miyuki for you. Never do one thing when you could do five. "Trying out _all _the new invasion material, My Tallest?"

"Irk favors efficiency, but you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" She smiled. "With your partnerships, I mean. No, it's a good thing. Not everyone still knows how to work in groups. Especially sensitive to your surroundings, too. You've a strong instinct, and more often than not, you're prone to follow them. It's an admirable quality… most of the time."

"Thank you, My Tallest." Though you weren't positive if it she'd meant it as a compliment. And speaking of instincts, all of yours told you that there was more that Miyuki wasn't telling you. "So, what's this moon like, anyway?"

Almighty Tallest Miyuki raised an eyebrow. "That's for you to find out, isn't it? You _are _the Invader in this scenario."

"Of course, My Tallest, but… Vada Prime's two hours from Meekrob with a good ship. My head's not gonna… go all explodey, is it?"

"Head-explodeys or lack thereof is a matter left up to you, Elite. Do remember to pass through sanitization upon return, though. Vada's been known for contaminants."

Tallest Miyuki approached slowly for a final appraisal. A staggering nine feet and eleven inches arched over your antennae, so close you heard the shift of her armor. Darkened beneath her shade, you were a tiny thing. Six-foot-ten was nothing. Nothing at all.

She blinked slowly, for The Tallest never rushed. With all the time in the universe at her leisure, there was no need. "I've been told you show promise, Irken Elite Purple. I expect that promise to be fulfilled."

"I will, My Tallest,"

"Good. You are dismissed."

* * *

"So?" Red dropped the four-foot nobody he'd been dangling over a balcony and dusted off his gloves. He always did know how to make the most of his time. "When's your execution? I hope it's not tomorrow, I've got stuff that day."

"Hi to you too, starshine. She says I'm—"

Something metallic crashed in the background, followed by a glass tinkle and a wavering little "I'm okay…" in the distance.

"Wow, good air."

Red smirked and buffed his nails on his gauntlet. "I know."

"I'm back from my meeting, where Tallest revealed that I'm taking my Invader Exam in the field. It's on a small moon near the Meekrob's star system, and if there's reasons for why, I'm afraid that I missed 'em." A few soldiers stopped to stare as you passed them on the way to your quarters. No doubt, they marveled at your exceptional language skills.

"Why are you talking like that?" Red shifted away, just in case whatever you had was contagious. "And what's with that… weird thing your voice is doing? It's going all loopy."

"That's called a melody, and I've gotta get my practice in soon because that's the cool fancy way they talk on the moon." You stopped and thought about it. "Actually, when you do it this way, I think it's just called _singiiiing _." And it turned out, you could still sing without rhyming anything. Good to know.

"Creepy."

"Well, _I _think it's neat!"

"Because it's really creepy!"

He had you there. Even if you never visited another singing planet again, you could always use it to psyche out enemies. Or to bug Red on a slow day. Both were good. "I think my verses need more oomph, a little more power."

Red blinked at that. "What's the rush?"

"I leave in an hour." Your gauntlet beeped. "Actually more like forty minutes."

It took a moment for him to realize you weren't kidding. "Oh."

The Irken race kept their emotions the same place they kept all soft, squishy bits of themselves: on the inside. Nobody wanted to see a heart flopping around on the floor, getting everything all sticky. Anything besides basic panic, anger, or excitement took a close read. You were never one for studying, but you'd always been a pretty good reader.

You watched Red's face shift as he sorted through several emotions, and hoped he didn't land on jealousy. It'd be a bad note to end on, especially if one of you stopped being alive between now and your homecoming. Red had an annoying habit of holding on to spiny feelings until his gloves bled. It came in handy when he needed a boost for mowing down enemies, but you preferred not to be one of those enemies.

Eventually, he settled on resignation. "What happens when you get back?"

"How am I supposed to know?" What was with everyone asking you that today? "I don't even know when I'll _be _back. Whatever happens happens, I dunno. I'll torch that bridge when I come to it."

Red gave you That Look. That _you're an idiot who's going to get your head blown off _look, which was a really rude thing to think of someone just because they didn't have a fifty-year plan in their pocket. Half Red's plans didn't even work, so he had some nerve marching around like some snooty snoot-master. "You don't have an invasion strategy at all, do you?"

For a second, you considered countering that practicing the native language counted as invasion prep. However, a future invader had better stuff to do, and the shrug you gave told him so. "Can't prep for a planet you don't know anything about."

"I thought you said it's a moon."

"Whatever. It's a field test, open notes, open fire. I'll learn when I get there; that's the whole point. And not to be that guy—"

"You're always that guy."

"—but I AM the first one in our batch to get their final exam. I know what I'm doing." _And I'll be just fine without you. _You didn't say that last part because you didn't have to.

The same way Red didn't have to say that he didn't need you either.

In fact, you didn't need each other so much, neither one said a thing through the process gathering test supplies, choosing rations, or giving the Commander your leave of absence.

The Commander already knew, of course, but it never hurt to remind her. She didn't show it, but your assignment impressed her because of course it did. It impressed everyone, once the news spread. Between the Elites and Elites-in-training between missions, stuck on-planet with nothing to do, word spread fast. Fancy strategy or no strategy, Elite Purple was still awesome and cool, so there.

Red trailed beside you, fiddling with his notes and pretending not to sulk all the way to the landing dock. He glanced at _The Famished _, crouched beside his own _Lenient _. Twin Spittle Runners alike in all ways except that one was warmed up and already hovering, ready to go.

The C.I.R. waved and smiled (seriously, since when did robots smile?) from the windshield.

"Hey, Plurps. Don't die out there, okay?" Red gestured to the little crowd pooling a few feet away. "You're one of the only jerks out here I tolerate."

"Please. Dying's for losers and short people."

"Why'd you say losers twice?"

That called for the highest of fives. "Heh, later."

"Later."


	2. For A Moon, She's A Pretty Good Singer

**WEEK 1, NIGHT 1**

Some did it in fields of fire and chaos and destruction. Some did it without firing a shot. The good ones could do both at once. When it came to conquering a planet (or moon), there were dozens upon dozens of methods, procedures, strategies, restrictions, directions, and regulations, and few of them done the same way twice. "Every planet will resist you, and every planet does it differently," Commander Poki once told you. "Adaptation and innovation separate the Invaders from the Elites."

In other words, those regulations and methodologies and all the other boring stuff they'd made you sit through for the last ten years? Pointless. Okay, not _totally _pointless, but optional. Flexible. Good to know, good to have, used or trashed like any other resource.

At the end of the day, an Irken Invasion had three rules:

1: Don't Blow Your Cover.

2:Don't Be A Sellout.

3: Don't Blow It Up (immediately).

That third rule was hardest. Irkens knew annihilation like Slor Beasts knew jiggliness. You'd learned how to make bombs before some lesser species learned how to make a sentence. True, you'd never been the best at mechanics, calculations, or tactics, but when it came to the art of blowing stuff up, you were a masterclass.

And first impressions said that Vada IV was _very _easy to blow up.

She could have fit in _The Massive's _snack compartment. If the coordinates weren't locked, you would have flown right past her. You could walk the entire surface in a week; five days at a jog. Barely bigger than an asteroid, smallest of her fellow moons, and completely dwarfed by Vada Prime, the place didn't seem worth an Invader's attention. (Then again, you weren't an Invader yet, so there you go.)

The first cruise over the surface showed no cities or notable infrastructure. None visible through the bushes and trees, anyway. Wooly blankets of fronds and grasses sprawled lazy and long, like someone had dropped a feather boa and left it there. The surface was so smooth that from a distance, you thought the place was all water and islands. It glowed a faint shade of smeet-green, the same color as the clouds.

Shocks of yellow wriggled all through the place, and they flashed and winked in the light. Not liquid and not rock. Metal, maybe? They kind of looked like fancy circuit boards.

"Hey, unit. What're those?"

The C.I.R. perked up from speak-when-spoken-to mode and peered out of the window. "Good evening Master! Oh hey, that's a neat looking little thing. Composition is a gallium-brass-glitzodite-silica alloy. Artificially constructed. Sensors indicate multiple foot patterns. Isn't that just super?"

"So, they're roads." Roads meant civilization, or something like it. "What lives here, anyway?"

"Ooh, let's see. I can detect approximately... twenty-five unique species varieties within our current proximity."

"Okay." You waited.

The C.I.R. stared back at you.

"And those species are…?"

"Insufficient data!"

Great.

Upon a closer second sweep of the area, this time following the circuit roads, you found more. Impressions within the hills. Lights in the branches. Windows carved into the tree bark. Not all of the trees were trees, and not all the hills were hills.

Whatever lived here had built _into _the landscape, not onto it. Thicket, city, same thing. That made sense. The locals, whoever they were, lived on a tiny moon, and least a third of it was liquid. Land curved around the water in one big crescent; an ocean with a huge beach or a landmass with one big lake, depending how you looked at it. Limited space meant getting creative with living areas. If they'd left some of the trees and grass and stuff standing and unmodified, that meant they probably needed it for… weird alien moon stuff.

Readings indicated breathable air and temperatures at a balmy 246.6. Warmer than Irk, cooler than Devastis. No signs of incoming storms or rain, despite the coat of clouds, and no humidity at all. Perfect rec weather.

You thought it over a moment. Slowly, carefully, you cracked the hatch.

Screw it. Hesitation was for smeets and smallers. You bumped it open all the way.

The air of Vada IV rushed in, and everything smelled of crystal sugar and salt and another sweetness you didn't have a name for. It rolled over the old stale scents of metal and week-old donuts. It would be two years before Vada IV faded from the upholstery and let _The Famished _smelled like itself again. You didn't know that part yet. If you had, you'd have never opened that hatch.

When a breeze rolled through the trees, the leaves tinkled and the grasses whistled. It had a pattern—no, a rhythm to it, and not just in the wind. Waves lapping against the shore, twirling curls of birdsong, peppery little croaks of frogs hiding in the grass, even the clicks and whirs of your PAK and the silent hiss of the Runner synthesized together to create a melody. (Harmony? Both?)

You knew what it meant when sounds came together for melodies and harmonies.

She sang. That's not a metaphor or some cute poet turn of phrase. The moon of Vada IV literally _sang _. A song without lyrics, and made it up as it went along, but a song nonetheless. Vada had to tweak her arrangement for you, but she called out to your counterpoint and threaded you in quickly. In no time at all, it was as if the moon's orchestra always had Spittle Runners and PAKs and C.I.R. units.

There was no panic when you landed. Not even when your base sprang up from the soil and shattered a knot of trees. Breakable little place.

No alarms, no inspector drones, no armies, no scouts, and no spies. A flock of glass birds twittered at you, and an iridescent frog seemed very interested in your foot, but that was all. Step one complete. Easy.

You circled the perimeter a few times. Got a good feel for your new home base, and styled it after the tree you'd just smashed: bigger, with a thicker truck and lush blue fronds so you could sit and spy in the branches. You based the C.I.R.'s disguise on the long-legged water birds that poked around the shore. No need to waste materials making synthetic fibers for fur, skin, or feathers either. That was handy.

For yourself, a disguise modeled off the leggy bipeds you spotted hanging around the house-trees. Forty minutes into the mission was too soon to know for sure whether they were the native inhabitants you'd come to conquer, but your 'spooch thought so and it hadn't been wrong yet. Besides, the biped stood at least five foot eleven. Anything with that kind of height had to have smarts to go with it. That's just plain logic.

That single biped had been the only one you'd seen so far, though. Nothing had come looking for you, even though the melody of the place had shifted. Either you were an even better stealth-master than you'd thought, or they weren't overtly hostile. Both, probably.

Maybe they just didn't come out during the day… or night. Or whatever time of day this was. Vada Prime orbited a star, but you couldn't see it down here. Smeet-green clouds coated the sky, thicker than milkshakes and twice as fluffy, yet the moon glowed underfoot from shore to shore.

The light, you realized, came from Vada IV herself. Homegrown, right there. She didn't need a sun.

"Huh. Neat."

For such a tiny thing, you had to give her credit. The place had charm.

* * *

**WEEK 1, NIGHT 2**

"Hey, what's my time limit for this place, anyway?"

"Good evening, Master! I'm so glad you asked. Your final exam time frame is a two-week minimum."

"Maximum?"

"None."

"…you're kidding." You sat up and peered at the pink metal bird balancing on one leg. The C.I.R. unit liked to stay in character, even in the base. "You're _kidding _."

"Final exam protocol incompatible with comedy programming." The C.I.R. switched legs, shifting its stubby wings. "But here is a joke if you would like to hear one: a Vortian, a Plookesian, and an Irken scientist discover a wish-granting apparatus in the—"

"I'm good. Lemme see those test instructions."

You read them for yourself. Thought for a sec. Two secs. Frowned. Paced the room twice. Read them again: Two-week minimum, no maximum. Limitless time.

Weird. Standard invasions ran somewhere between three months and three years, depending on the planet and the Invader. A moon without much landmass should have had a short limit, especially since it was an exam. Sim-pod tests lasted an hour on the outside. Nobody knew how long the test lasted from the inside, but it couldn't be over a decade.

Wouldn't it be better to run through the test quick and go straight to the real work? _"Irk favors efficiency," _Miyuki had said. This didn't seem very efficient. On the other hand, nobody learned anything from a smoldering pile.

Rule Three, in other words. Rule Three had always been tricky; one of those things that said one thing but really meant something else. It meant "don't run in and smash up the joint or you might break Rule One". It meant "sit down, shut up, and learn about the place before the planet (or moon) teaches you the hard way".

It meant wait. Watch. Listen. Take your time.

Sure, okay. You'd done spy junk before; you could play the long game. Relax, make some conversation. Kick up your heels, Purple, stay a while.

The wind smoothed through the fronds of your base, tugging along its sugary smells and bouncy little vibrations. Your antennae twitched in time with it. They hadn't stopped twitching since you'd landed.

Vada IV seemed easy to get along with in the meantime. Lucky you.

* * *

**WEEK 1, NIGHT 3**

It happened at the start of Vada's gibbous, and to be _totally _fair, it wasn't your fault. The biped surprised you and made you scream. You shot its head off and surprised it back. Fair's fair.

Some fussier types might call that "reckless engagement" or a "disastrous first contact", but you rightfully called it a pre-emptive strike. Accidents happened. Plus it saw you undisguised, so it had to happen anyway. Caught in your native skin and almost blew the mission in forty-eight hours. You'd always been a record-breaker.

Really, though. It was an accident. You'd meant it as a warning shot, but the native didn't fall so much as it shattered into a schmillion pieces.

You stood there a moment, still a little shaken from the last three seconds. Pink and orange glass spread around your feet. It looked somewhere between a starburst and a body outline. From a distance, you'd thought the locals just had shiny skins, but no. Glass—crystal, maybe?—same as the birds and leaves: brightly colored, fragile, and glittering like a glove full of monies. The shards couldn't pierce your glove, though they'd probably hurt if you stepped on them barefoot.

This felt like a good opportunity to take samples. You had no idea what to do _with _those samples, but it seemed like a good thing to have. The C.I.R. perched in the branches of your tree base and took photos.

The others arrived not long after that. This time, you heard them coming. A little chorus bubbled through the trees, the voices overlapping and climbing higher and higher, louder and louder.

Then they stopped.

Beyond the pile of broken glass, a gathering of locals watched you. Five of them, with more coming over the forest ridge. The light shining from the moon's surface didn't go through them all the way, but it glowed through their extremities and shimmered in all their facets. When they moved, spots of light wriggled all over the place.

One with a large chunk missing from its shoulder knelt by the broken glass and ran its hands through the shards. "He's all in ruins. What happened to him?" It made a sad little noise and stared at you as if you had a recipe in your pocket for raising the dead. "He was supposed to dance today. Do you know what happened?"

"I can't really say. Just woke up from a nap, and it's not very clear. I heard a crash, then a smash somewhere up high in the tiers. I came outside, and... it was like that when I got here." Not the best cover story in the universe (or the best rhyme scheme) but that didn't matter. You said it like you meant it. Like on most planets, that mattered much more.

The local with the chipped shoulder came closer. It frowned. "Have we met before? Something's strange in your rhythm. Like a dissonant score with the melody hidden." It turned to the other locals, who were all just as lost. "If you don't mind my asking—I don't mean to be rude—but your song's so contrasting—"

"It's just 'cause I'm… new?"

And that was all they needed. The glass folk rushed you like a pack of fresh recruits at snack time, standing on their toes to get a better look and calling out over each other.

You jumped back, on the lookout for a knife or spear or whatever these things used. Just because you didn't see any didn't mean they didn't have them.

"You're NEW!?" Chipped Shoulder clasped its fingers and did an excited little jump of its own. "How lucky! How lovely! Positively sublime! You'll get to see the dancehall trellis for the very first time. I don't mean to ramble; I bet I sound like a dunce. But you see I'm so jealous; you're only new once."

"That's… um."

You took a deep breath. Unclenched your fists, assessed the situation. Checked again for weapons. Wondered if the locals practiced hand-to-hand combat.

There were so _many _. In the last few minutes, those first five natives had doubled, then tripled into a full gathering. The last time this many pressed around you was in the thick of the arena fights, and half of those were fellow Irkens. Off-worlders never got this close. Not this many. Not ever. You wanted your smoke bombs back.

You'd known it wouldn't be like landing on a conquered planet. Knowing and believing, however, were two very different things. Insurgents didn't lurk in the grass. Nobody itched to rip out your PAK and poke at the insides. This crowd was (probably) harmless. You just had to keep telling yourself that.

A yellow local admired your PAK and wondered about the "funny-sounding metronome". Another sang about something called a "quickstep". Two others argued that you obviously didn't do quicksteps and clearly liked "cakewalks" and "tangos". You nodded at that last part. Cakewalks sounded tasty, whatever they were.

Nothing about this felt right. Invasions were supposed to be quiet. New or not, you'd still managed to slip into the population. Nobody blamed you for the dead guy. The response should have been apathy. Ignorance. A few minutes of curiosity before everyone moved on and minded their own business.

Not here. The moon had been in a stir since _The Famished _broke through the atmosphere. That part didn't surprise you. All planets (or moons or asteroids) know their pieces—the soil, metals, wildlife, locals, juice bars, atmosphere, whatever—and they know how those pieces fit together in just the right way. They know when a foreign piece jams itself into the puzzle.

Vada IV knew it, too. You weren't one of hers. You didn't belong here. You'd done nothing to prove yourself and offered nothing of value. She didn't know you, and yet she welcomed you anyway.

It was weird. A nice change of pace, but still weird.

Finally, when the crowd calmed down and you could hear yourself think, you said, "You're only new once... I guess that's true. They call me Purple." Because you couldn't think of an alias. "It's nice to meet you."

All the best lies had some truth stuffed inside them.

Someone really needed to teach these guys about personal bubbles. Chipped Shoulder leaned in so close, you could see your own disguise in its blank glassy face. It had a mouth if you looked closely, but no eyes.

Curious, you waved a hand in front of its head. No reaction. You snapped your fingers.

It reached out and touched your glove, which was **_rude_**, but it didn't know that. It probably didn't mean to get its gross space germs all over your body, either. "Why does your hand feel different?"

You swallowed the dignified yelp in your throat and slowly took your hand back. "Just my glove, it's not significant."

A sea of eyeless faces focused on you. Not watching, but listening. Blind. Every one of them was blind. It didn't matter if they saw you undisguised. At the edge of the crowd, a team of locals carefully gathered a large pile of glass shards. You didn't watch that for long.

"What are you wearing gloves for?"

"I like wearing gloves." You edged away from more grasping hands. "But I like personal space even more."

In the end, you decided to put your hands in your pockets. They stayed there for the rest of the day.

* * *

**WEEK 1, NIGHT 4**

"Computer, put in a call to Devastis. Pod 024, Section 26."

One beep. Two beeps.

_"CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED." _

Fine. Direct call, then. "Contact order. Connect to PAK#e82d10—I.D. Irken Elite Red."

Not even a beep this time.

"C.I.R., what's with this?"

"All outward communications are barred until completion of the final exam, Master."

In other words, eyes on your own screen, no talking. Don't call us, we'll call you.

The robot hopped up on its lanky bird legs, grinning with a mouth it didn't need. "If you require companionship or personal communication, I fully function as a sympathy model."

"_ Sympathy _model? Seriously?" Irk's sake, did The Tallest think you were five?

"Companionship is what the C stands for," the unit chirped. It perched on your knee, obnoxiously proud of itself. "I will begin now. Good evening, Master. How was your day? Mine is going just swell! I observed seven hundred and fifty-six new forms of organic life. Twenty-five of these life forms approached my master twelve hours ago. How about that? We have something in common. You are welcome to discuss! Have a taco."

"Yeah, that's a no from me. Standby for a mission log, I'm going out in twenty minutes." You accepted the taco, though. "And get me three more of those."

* * *

**WEEK 1, NIGHT 7**

_Dictionary Entry: "Dance". _

_Noun: the act of dancing, a social gathering where dancing takes place. _

_Int. Verb. (Conjugated: dancing, danced.): A pattern of rhythmic movement, often in tune to music (see entry: "Song"). _

_Used amongst Vada IV's sapient population to maintain social bonds, express emotion. _

_Further research needed. _

For such a simple ritual, you've never been able to describe it. You tried your best in the mission logs, and the simple definition with visual footage satisfied the Empire. But definitions and visuals and movement schematics couldn't explain the rest of it, the core of it. It couldn't explain the whys, just the hows, wheres, and whens.

Dancing talked without words. Like singing with your body, but even better because you didn't need to know the language. You didn't even need to know the official steps to the right kinds of dances. Dancing needed music and a body, and that was all.

Like a fight, but friendly-like! Just with fewer broken bones and blood loss, and a little more body contact.

Want to understand someone? Who they are, how they move, what they feel, how they feel it? Fight them. Fight with them, fight against them, fight them in friendly spars or to the death or in a battle-mech, it doesn't matter. People put all of themselves in a fight. Fights are electric tangles of arms and legs and metal and lasers and whatever else is around. Fights are life.

That feeling. _That _was dancing. That same sweet electric thrill ran through all the little steps and twirls, and it never went away. No wonder the locals never stopped.

They danced in singles, doubles, and interlocking lines upon lines of bodies. All the dances had different names, and so did the gatherings attached to them: ballrooms, foxtrots, sock hops, discos (personal favorite), hoedowns, quadrilles (Chipped Shoulder's favorite and a popular choice all around), contras, waltzes, tangos, ballet (complex, looked difficult and painful; Red would've liked it), fandangos (second favorite), hulas, mambos, allemandes, two-steps, and many others you never learned names for.

If they had something to celebrate, they danced about it. If they had a score to settle, they danced about it. If they had nothing better to do that day, they danced about it.

By the end of the first week, you'd witnessed five breakups, two arguments, ten alliances, and something called a "wedding" in the dancehalls alone. That was a week in Irk-time, a month in Vada's. The little moon lived fast, squeezing every drop out of every phase.

You could appreciate that, and had no shame admitting it. Even enemies had admirable traits, sometimes. And wasn't that the whole point of an invasion? To see what a planet had to offer? If Vada IV wanted to be generous, who were you to deny a gift?

* * *

**WEEK 2, NIGHT 8**

For the sake of your records, your S++, and your sanity, you called the locals "Spinners". You didn't know their real name and you would never find out.

They didn't name themselves when they sang to you or to each other. They kept no records. They didn't have histories, save for the shards they left behind. When they sang about themselves, it was always "You" or "I" or "Us" or "We". And it's not like you could've waltzed up and asked, "Oh hey, just for the record what's the name of our own species?" (At least, you don't think so.)

You noticed there were no "They"s or "Them"s, so maybe these guys just never had a reason to name themselves. "Us" was enough.

No names. None for the species, none for the village.

The individuals had them. You didn't know them and didn't care to learn.

"You're a cute place, Vada, but let's keep it casual."

* * *

**WEEK 2, NIGHT 11**

They didn't call it a funeral, but that's what it was.

You'd seen this kind of thing before in the collective memory, and twice in person. The one on Vada was the first one you'd ever seen up close, and the first one you'd actually been invited to. Because you understood the Spinners a little more than you'd understood Vortians or Blobs, you hoped this funeral might make more sense.

It didn't. Like all the others, it was a ritual gathering where everyone came together to make a fuss over someone too busy being dead to appreciate it.

And all that for _one _creature. One. Not a fleet. Not an army. Not a generation. One single individual. And it's not like the Spinners couldn't make another one. They grew and reproduced in the crystal caves on the far end of the beach. But hey, any excuse for a dance, right?

They held this funeral in particular for the individual you'd shot to pieces last week (or last month, depending on the calendar). The Spinners waited until Vada IV waned completely and the moon had gone completely dark, save for the dim glow in the contours of their long glass bodies and the bioluminescent flower crowns they wore on their heads.

Because the dead couldn't come dance, they took the dance to the dead. You, personally, didn't dance much that night, because this one seemed… complicated. You watched, though.

You watched them scatter the body's shards around a tree house that belonged to the dead one's offspring. You watched while they sewed the smaller shards into the borders of the shiny circuit roads. You listened to them sing reprises and refrains of songs the dead Spinner apparently used to sing. A little song that used to be part of a bigger one.

Melodies lifted upwards, curling through the tree branches where you sat. Close enough to be part of the gathering, but too much trouble to contact directly. You spent the better part of the night there, peering into the swells of green clouds and thinking of the stars beyond those clouds. Thinking of who waited out there beyond the clouds and stars, and how if one of you deactivated there was nothing that the other one could do about it.

If the worst happened, you had no real way to remember Red or for Red to remember you. There was no need. The Collective would know you and keep you, and that was enough. It had to be. Besides, when the PAK recycled, you'd be back again. Sort of. You wouldn't be the same Irken as before; you'd be the next someone else. Not you anymore. So maybe that didn't count after all.

You didn't understand funerals. Still don't. When you're gone, you're gone. That's all. The end.

Dumb to even think about, really. You'd always been kind of dumb.

* * *

**WEEK 2, NIGHT 14**

The Spinner looked up from your slow dance. "Say, do you hear that beat? It's coming out on the down-low. There—out there, northwards: someone's jamming at the window."

Every pair in the dancehall twirled north. "In the crystal mesquite," another sang, "Purple, isn't that your flaminco?"

"If it is," called another, "tell him 'turn up the tempo."

For a second, you considered bowing out, but that meant crossing half the dancehall and attracting even more attention. You'd told your unit to stay silent and/or out of hearing range. It couldn't contradict a direct order unless it detected a threat or conflicted with another higher order.

The C.I.R. unit bobbed on the wobbling tree branch outside, pecking out a steady rhythm. No, not rhythm. A code. Its eyes flashed with the same message.

_"TWO WEEK MINIMUM COMPLETE." _

You stepped on your dance partner's foot. The Spinner complained, but you barely heard it. Two weeks already? Last you'd checked, it'd only been eight days.

When you snapped back into focus, you found half the dancehall had turned to you. "Are you alright?" one of them asked.

"Yeah. Just missed a step from a trick of the light."

* * *

**WEEK 3, NIGHT 15**

Alright. Back to work.

Wait. Did the dances count as work? You weren't sure. It was essential for blending in and therefore essential to the mission. Quality time with Vada IV meant more information and more information meant a thorough invasion. The bulk of three whole days away from the base did seem excessive, though.

For some reason, your C.I.R. expressed concern when you finally came home. Companion models, go figure.

"You have audio recordings of the funerary ritual, right?"

"I sure do, Master."

"Play it. Time code eighteen-hundred hours and fifty minutes."

The funeral itself was still nonsense, but you'd heard something familiar those refrains. The Spinners had taken a collection of songs and added it to a greater chorus. Kind of like an organic musical collective.

Your antennae lifted high, twitching in time to Vada IV's natural metronome. "It's an Us."

A chord within a song. A song within a medley. Slowly, you turned towards the open window full of sound. A glass bird and a trio of frogs were having a jam session on your windowsill.

The C.I.R. unit shuffled closer. "Clarify?"

"I think Vada IV might be an Us. Not a fancy one, but…"

The C.I.R. stared, lost.

Robots didn't get this stuff. "Look, just trust me on this. It's an organic thing."

It could have been a wild guess, or cabin fever creeping up on you, but you didn't think so. It would sure explain why you took to dancing so well.

There was a lot of Vada IV you didn't understand, but the concept of "Us"… That part you knew well.

You knew the Us of an Elite squad closing a snare around Screwhead platoons. You knew the Us of huddling in the smeeteries with smeets whose names you didn't remember. The Us of killing together, running together, laughing together, hating together, failing together, winning together. The Us of ganging up on some filthy offworlders who didn't know when they'd lost.

You knew the Us of two pulse-shots hitting a Rat right in his big ugly face.

The Us of skittering off after-hours to dig up some fun. The Us of splitting a bowl of snacks on the roof of your ship. The Us of sitting around and not doing anything at all. What you wouldn't give to have your Us back, just for a minute or ten.

Just for kicks, you tried another call to Devastis.

Still blocked.

In the middle of wondering what Red was doing right then, a procession of Spinners waltzed by your door.

They were on their way to a cotillion on the beach. You didn't know what a cotillion was, but it felt like a good night for discoveries.

* * *

**WEEK 3, NIGHT 16**

"Thanks, but no thanks. I'm staying inside. Though a sock hop sounds cute, that part I'll confide." This place did wonders for the vocabulary. "I welcome the sentiment, but I'm not feeling well. My healthcare takes precedence."

"That part I can tell." The Spinner with the chipper shoulder crossed its arms, and its spindly fingers went _tink-tink-tink _as it tapped them in thought. "Well, in that case I know what to do. If you can't go out, I'll just stay here with you."

You paused in the middle of closing the door. "Why… why would you do that? You'd miss the dance."

"Sock hops are for kids and I've had my chance." It came closer, and song changed keys. "You're not the only one here with priorities. I think you need help—"

"On whose authority?"

Chipped Shoulder huffed. "Well, it's clear you've been lonely—it runs all through your score. I felt it last night all the way from the shore. Something's upset you, and don't try to deny it. You're my friend, let me help you. At least let me try it."

"Wait." Last night, it said. What had you been doing last night? You'd been trying to get a call through to Devastis. "You said that you _felt _it? Out there at the offshore?"

"Loud and clear, in every last contour." It laughed in a crisp bell-like sound. "Feeling is something everyone here understands. You feel me too, right?"

"Yeah. Sure I can."

And to your surprise, it wasn't a complete lie. You hadn't noticed before, but if you stopped and concentrated, you felt something. It was faint—a dull, dampened pulse squirming around your insides. Concern. Affection. Other freaky slimy feelings you didn't know names for.

This was not good. Very not good. Extremely very super not good.

Chipped Shoulder stepped back, surprised. "Your whole tone just flipped—like a whole different song." Its voice raised an octave. "Purple, what's wrong?"

"I—I'll be fine, but I really can't talk. It's no big deal I just need to take a walk. A long walk. By myself right now, seeyoutomorrowbye!"

You slammed the door hard and put the base on lockdown.

_Felt it _, the Spinner had said. If it could do that, all of them could too. There was a name for creatures who could feel feelings.

"COMPUTER!" Your voice popped out all pitchy and panicked.

No good. Invaders were calm. Collected. Heartless. You took a deep breath. Yes, here you were: an Invader in enemy territory, calm, collected, and heartless. Just look at that ice-cold guy on the floor, not freaking out at all. That was you, alright.

"_ Ahem. _Computer. Recap Meekrob abilities."

_"MEEKROB: BEINGS OF PURE ENERGY. TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION. ABILITIES INCLUDE PSYCHIC NETS, MIND-LINKS. CLASSIFIED EMPATHS. _

"Empaths…"

Of course. In a soft place like Vada IV, the locals didn't need to see, just hear and sense and feel. Right on the edge of Meekrob territory, too. "Do the Spinners have that? Can you detect any… empathy… feelings… wave thingys?"

_"CONFIRMED. SPECIES KNOWN AS 'SPINNER' DETECTS EMOTIONAL OUTPUT EMITTED BY NATIVE AND FOREIGN SPECIES." _

"Okay." You slumped against the wall and sighed. "Okay… So. All of them, they know what I'm feeling, but not what I'm thinking." What had you been feeling the past two weeks? Excitement, curiosity, a little fear sometimes, and apparently you'd been more homesick than you'd thought. "Just feelings can't say that much, right?" You glanced at your robot. "Right?"

The C.I.R. unit scratched its head and shrugged.

"If they're not telepaths, then they still don't know why I'm here."

How could they? Spinners couldn't suspect an Invader if they didn't know what an Invader was. Animals with no natural predators didn't know how to run from teeth.

Still, you didn't like the idea of everyone on the moon rooting through your feelings. Oh Irk, they couldn't get to your Box could they? No, probably not. Keeping that stuff in lockdown was the whole point of having a Box.

"Computer, can you dampen the emotional output with a PAK mod?"

_"NEGATIVE. PAK MODIFICATION OUT OF PROGRAMMING RESTRICTIONS. ADDITIONAL SIDE NOTE: NO IRKEN EMPATHIC INPUT DETECTED." _

That didn't sound right. "Run it again. Full scan."

After a moment, _"NO IRKEN EMPATHIC INPUT DETECTED. SPINNER INPUT INCOMPATIBLE WITH CURRENT PAK." _

If they could feel you, but you couldn't feel them, how did that explain all those weird skweebly feelings in your spooch? If the Spinners weren't doing it and Vada IV herself wasn't doing it, that had to mean…

Nah. No way.

You'd done enough research on the locals. There was still other research to do. "Computer, re-enter lockdown in five minutes. C.I.R., come. We're going for a walk.


	3. It's a Ballad, Not a Love Song

WEEK 3, NIGHT 17-NIGHT 20 

_An Abridged Inventory of:  
Vada IV; Vada Prime Sister Moon  
Observed By:  
Irken Elite Purple, PAK #8c33b5 _

_GEOLOGICAL FEATURES _

_\- Moon surface area approx.2,232.764 kL. 1800 kL land area. 15% sand. 85% solid landmass._

_\- Moon surface emits its own light, according to phase. New moons rare. Common status full, waxing, or waning (in that order)._

_\- C.I.R. testing and Computer analysis reveal zero (0) materials, minerals, or rocks beneficial to The Irken Empire._

No benefit that you could see, anyhow. The lunar surface was unique, but it had the same sheen and properties of stones like carnelian, jade, and… well, moonstone. The sort of stuff that the fancy castes of frivolous planets wore on their bodies to enhance their appearance. Irkens were beyond stupid stuff like that, and the Empire already had more shiny rocks than it knew what to do with.

Not only that, but unlike gems, stones like Vada's surface were better whole. Cutting her up would just ruin the aesthetic value, and aesthetics were all Vada IV had going for her. She was only pretty in one piece. All readings from the probes indicated no usable material beneath the surface, either.

Drilling, mining, and excavation were all out.

_**FINAL CONCLUSION:**  
EXTRACTION NOT VIABLE.  
STANDARD TERRAFORM LAND-USE ONLY. _

_HYDROLOGICAL FEATURES_

_\- Remaining 432.764 kL land area: one (1) body of water._

_\- Temperature constant 252.2, regardless of air temp. Hot springs unconfirmed._

_\- Nontoxic._

_\- Indigestible._

Found that last part out the hard way. The water came right back up after swallowing it, though. Of course, the only way to swallow it was to do it on purpose. (Brilliant guy that you were, you'd opted for the tried and true let's-drink-this-and-see-what-happens test.)

The buoyant waters of Vada IV bounced you to the surface before you could sink. One brave night, you discovered that you could dive and swim beneath the gentle waves to observe the schools of clockfish. You didn't stay down there for long because Irkens were never meant for water (or whatever this was) but it had been neat to do.

You took your breathers here. While the C.I.R. waited on the shore, you'd paddle to the middle of the lake where the water was warmest and just… float for a while. A little island of you, in a puddle of lavender water under smeet-green clouds. No better place to be after a long, hard dance. Warmth soaked through skin, bone, and all your sore little joints. (Back then, in the days when you could still run, you'd thought you knew what it meant to be sore. Ha.)

Sometimes, if you lay still enough, the frogs would use your legs and shoulders for a boat ride. They'd sit there and ignore you while they chirped and sang to themselves, in synch with the wind and the clinking of your PAK and the Spinners on the shore.

Other times, you sang. Not for the mission. Not for any reason, really. It was just a thing you felt like doing sometimes. If you did it with the tips of your antennae dipped in the water, bulls-eyes rippled outward in time to your tune.

Your songs were all improvised, most of them bad, and composed of 70-percent dum-de-dums and shoo-be-doos. Vada didn't seem to mind it. Funny thing, though; she only seemed to respond to the songs you made up yourself.

A few times, you tried singing other stuff, like the Callnowia catalog jingle and a few propaganda songs from the Eras when Irkens still sang songs. Those songs didn't ripple through the water at all, and made the little frogs jump off your legs. The Spinners had bobbed along to _Collectivize, Prioritize _to be polite, but they clearly didn't care for it.

To be fair, it had never really been a tune to dance to.

_**FINAL CONCLUSION:**  
SERVICEABLE.  
FLUID PRESERVATION RECOMMENDED. _

_VEGETATION_

_\- Various species, sub-species of grasses, shrubs, trees, ivy, flowers. (See C.I.R. files for specific categorization)_

_\- Adapted for Vada IV's biomes (veldt, beach, thickets) and temperate climate._

_\- All vegetation geo-organics, glass/crystal-like._

_\- Fragile._

_\- Produce: One (1) fruit-bearing tree suitable for Irken consumption. Rare._

Good thing you'd brought your own snacks along. Your PAK couldn't process the light of Vada's surface very well. You _could _eat the fruit that grew on the other side of the moon, but you didn't want to. It had a grainy texture, tasted like raw powdered sugar, and broke apart in a goopy mess at the slightest pressure. Not great on its own, but spread over donuts? AMAZING.

For the better part of a lunar cycle, you were convinced this was Vada's core use. What could be better than a moon that just grew donut frosting? It'd be like a specialized Cornucopix except even better because seriously—THE best donut topping ever. EVER.

However, you knew enough about agriculture to know it wouldn't have worked. Farming needed constant production, especially if it was going towards snacks. The C.I.R. data and computer analysis estimated a growth rate of once every ten years. It probably wouldn't be worth the effort to sustain it.

_**FINAL CONCLUSION:**  
IMPRACTICAL USAGE. NOT VIABLE _

_WILDLIFE _

_\- C.I.R. Unit documented 176 unique native non-sapient species (see files for detailed classification)_

_\- Majority aquatic, semi-aquatic life: fish, corals, frogs, crabs_

_\- Terrestrial: frogs, toads, birds_

_\- Hostiles: Zero (0)_

Not just un-hostile to you, either. Vada IV had no natural predators of any kind. In fact, it didn't even really have consumers, only producers and scavengers.

Every color and variety of bird, from the glass songbirds nesting by the window to the metallic flamincos that waded on the shoreline, mostly ate the shedded rock candy bark of trees. They'd eat the fruit if it was nearby, and the songbirds liked donut crumbs but neither of those was common. The clockfish ate dead corals. The corals ate minerals and stuff in the water. The rainbow frogs didn't have mouths at all. You guessed that they absorbed and processed Vada's moonlight the same way the Spinners did.

The native wildlife's data needed more review.

* * *

WEEK 3, NIGHT 21

Contrary to certain tall, red-eyed people's belief, you did in fact do your homework sometimes. The fact that you'd waited until week three to finish it was beside the point.

One trip around the moon later, you arrived home to recap the itinerary report. You cross-referenced data from the computer and your robot (who'd turned out to be a handy mode of transport) and your gut instinct to be absolutely sure.

Even now, you couldn't believe it, but almost four full cycles of observation and a mountain of data didn't lie. Vada IV was toothless.

She'd always been a weird planet, but this went beyond weird. It was wrong.

A living world didn't act this way. Everything alive did everything in its power to stay alive. There had to be a catch, some kind of defense mechanism. Every planet—EVERY planet—fought invaders like bodies fought disease. Normally, the native inhabitants brought that fight. That was kind of the whole point of invading and not just swinging by with an orbital cannon on day one.

Invasion procedure was in your DNA. Root out and nullify defenses. Identify and neutralize threats. Pin worlds under your boot, rip out their teeth and claws, poke out their eyes, carve out every single possible mode of resistance.

Vada IV had no threats, no defenses, no claws, no teeth.

Forget violent locals, even gentle planets had an apex predator or three. They had poisonous plants, acidic clouds, exploding flowers, gloomy bogs, crappy snack bars, an obscene sales tax—_ some _thing! For the love of Irk, you couldn't even _drown _.

Nothing and no one tested your skills here. Why use Vada IV for an Invader Exam when she had nothing to invade?

Almighty Tallest Miyuki wasn't a prankster (to your knowledge), and she'd watched you so intently the last time you'd spoken. She had seen something in you. There had to be a reason you, specifically, were dancing on Vada IV and not blasting your way through military bases or slithering through a senate.

_No time maximum. Minimum: two weeks. _

And the test had been set up to make sure you couldn't just fall back on your normal Elite methods.

It added up, you supposed. Everyone already knew you were vicious, handsome, clever, flexible, handsome, and capable of subduing a planet. If they'd made it all the way to finals, most Elites were all of those things already (except the handsome part). Usually these tests were just a formality, but not this one. Not for you. It had been hand-picked.

So if The Tallest wasn't testing you in any of the regular fields, it had to be something else.

What, though?

"Purple?"

You blinked, snapped out of your own thoughts. Glanced at the waves lapping on the shoreline and all the sparkling bodies dancing on the sand. Looked back at your dance partner. "Yeah?"

The pointy green Spinner looked up from the tango dip, curious. How something without a face managed to be that expressive, you'd never know. "Tonight you've been so intense. Always singing inside you, walled up and fenced."

"He's been walled up for weeks, where have you been?" Nearby, Chipped Shoulder looked up from its partner. "I'm just glad that he showed up again. What did you do that whole time, if you don't mind my imposing?"

"I've been fine," you told him. What was a music-ey word for thinking? "Just busy… composing."

"Ooh, it must be extensive." The pointy Spinner swooped to take the lead. "Something with arcs—comprehensive, complex!"

Everyone was in on it now. Theories bounced across the beach fro one dancer to another.

"Something sad? Something wistful?"

"Nah, we've got torch songs by the fistful. It must be something frightening and frantic."

"An epic about revenge and birthright."

"Yes, haunted and tragic!"

"Sounds pretentious and trite. And probably bad."

"Oh, you hate everything anyway," snapped Chipped Shoulder. "I still think it sounds sad."

The dance spiraled around you. If you looked, you could see your face reflected in a hundred faces. Your real one, undisguised, because there was no point hiding it from blind people.

…Locals.

Blind _locals _.

The sight of this Irken almost-Invader with the droopy antennae reflected in the mass of Spinners unsettled you. You chose to watch the clouds instead. "I haven't thought about it, but I guess it's a little sad. At least a little upsetting. I'm not sure what it is yet; what do you call a song with a bad ending?"

"A ballad."

"An opera. Remember the last one, about the fish and the lager?"

"What's the difference?" you asked.

"Operas are longer."

The first one sounded better. "I'm composing a ballad. It's not done yet."

"I hope you'll share it with us."

"Oh, on that you can bet."

* * *

WEEK 4, NIGHT 22 

_Dictionary Entry: "Peace". _

_Noun: A period of time between wars, conflict, and violent encounters. A state free from disturbance. _

If you tried, you could remember him. Not his species or any fancy specifics like that, but you knew he'd had knives and wings and he screamed at you the whole time. Some nameless rebel schmuck tossed in the arena for fun and profit. The fight didn't last very long, and all in all, had turned out pretty boring.

That'd happened about four weeks ago, a few hours before The Tallest arrived. Unless you counted the first contact incident (and you didn't), today marked the longest time you'd gone without killing anything since you'd become an Elite. At least, you thought so. Without a sun, days and nights blended into each other. The Irk weeks became a month somewhere between the cotillion and the tango.

Before the final exam, your last moment of peace had been those hours between the area and _The Indomitable _. Even in those hours, peace wasn't really peace. Every second of every hour, something happened. The call for a new mission. Hostile explosions. Benign explosions. A squabble among the smallers. A melee between the tallers.

Still, those were the moments between a Rat digging its claws under your PAK, or setting off a line of grenades on the outskirts of Foodcourtia, or an interstellar bar fight. So it still counted as peace.

But the real thing? Those dawdling happy moments of rest between you and the rest of the universe? Those didn't come by often. Didn't stay long, either. Those past few years, you'd usually found them with Red—little pockets of time for lounging around with dumb jokes and snacks. Times to exist for the sake of existing. You'd liked those.

On Vada, those pockets of time were all the time. Peace came standard issue there. Frogs didn't keep soldier schedules, glass birds didn't hatch plots, and Spinners didn't even have a word for destruction.

Peace with no end date. No time limit. It still felt weird, but when you weren't looking, you'd gotten used to it. Felt kind of nice.

The exam went on indefinitely. If you'd really wanted to, you could have stayed as long as you wanted. Months. Years. Centuries.

Vada would have been happy to have you, the way she'd always been happy to have you. She didn't want anything from you. No performance reviews, no evaluation. She wouldn't ask you to wring yourself dry, to give everything in you until your body had nothing left to give. At the end, she wouldn't drag the PAK from your hollow body to start the process all over again—because all PAKs were loans from the Empire. Eventually, they'd need it back.

She was all give, no take. No catch. No interest loan. Whatever Vada IV gave you, you would own, and if you wanted, you could keep it forever. Stay with her. Sing under the smeet-green clouds, go to discos with her dancers, and be at peace.

It was a nice idea. A comfortable idea.

…Too comfortable an idea.

Listen.

She was a nice moon. Really, she was.

If you were a different person with a different sort of job and a different sort of species, maybe you could've spent your life with her. You'd thought of it, sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes. Usually on those lonely nights when she whispered in your ear with frog chirps and the mechanical whistling of glass birds.

Vada's songs of a future full of operas and desserts dragged your heart so much that you wanted to do something silly. Something stupid.

Something unspeakable.

"Oh."

That's why Vada IV was your final exam.

* * *

WEEK 4, DAY 23 

For what it's worth, you tried. And for the record log, you tried for the sake of your Empire, your S-rank, and your dedication to researching every angle before a drastic decision. No other reason. None at all.

That's why you waited until the end to finish your reports—to be thorough. Besides, you needed something to do while the C.I.R. installed the cannons and established detonation sites.

The first six detonations surrounded the dance hall, with two additional canons planted inside. Together, they did most of the work.

"Alright, gimme a second circle of those outside the perimeter."

"Ooh, nifty!" A holographic map marked with purple x's spiraled out of the C.I.R.'s beak. "You mean like this?"

"Yeah, just like that. Good."

"This'll get all those escape routes, right?"

"Hey, can you _not _blab this to the whole moon?" Most of the place should've been still asleep, but you never knew. "But yeah, that's the idea." It'd pick off the stragglers, too.

The C.I.R. preened and hopped from foot to foot. It had been in a good mood, and pushed speak-when-spoken-to mode for all it was worth. "While you're reviewing, would you like to hear a joke? I promise it's a really good one."

"Maybe later."

_**INVENTORY REPORT:**  
__NATIVE INHABITANTS_

_\- Species: "Spinner". Codename._

_\- No official species name given._

_\- Bipedal geo-organics_

_\- Average Height Range: 3.5-5 (juvenile); 5-6.5 (adult)_

_\- Reproductive cycle: Slow. Spawn from crystal grows in brooding caves. Details unknown._

_\- Non-hostile_

_\- Social_

_\- Sapience Level: Class 5.5_

Technically, Class 5.5 didn't exist, but it seemed like the best fit. If you stretched, an argument could be made for Class 6. Most Class 5 species, like Slaughtering Rat People or the Smoke Folk of Quellazaire, didn't have culture, complex social structures, or specific rituals. The dances counted as all three.

The Spinners of Vada IV sang what they felt and danced out everything else. Celebrations and bonding through discos. Village-wide line dance funerals. They settled political arguments (if "where does the new tree go" counted as political) with one-on-one battles called "breakdances"—so named because they danced so hard, bits and pieces of themselves broke off. That had been what happened to Chipped Shoulder; it got caught up in a heated debate about adding new steps to the quadrille. (Won that debate, too. You knew you'd liked that guy for a reason.)

The dance battles sounded cool. You wished you could've seen one, but even if you had, you still couldn't classify it as a real battle. Unfortunately.

The Spinner song language alone should've bumped them to a Class 6. Class Six, and they'd have scraped out of the Primitives and into Average. Screw Head and Planet Jacker range. A far cry from Class 9 (Irkens) or Class 10 (Control Brains) but it'd be enough not to do anything rash.

Anything intelligent—they _were _tall, after all—could serve a purpose. A use. Everyone, as Red liked to say, was good for something. You just never discovered what that something was.

Like Vada herself, the Spinners did as they pleased and never worked a phase in their life. They didn't understand threats. Not even the basic "move this rock to those other rocks, or I'll shoot you". Five hours of trying only resulted in the one-hit-wonder "Move That Rock!" ruling the dance hall for two phases.

Even if they could grasp the concept, only a fraction of Irkens could translate their language. You did okay, but anything too complex still needed empath readings to get your point across.

_"Purple really needs us to learn 'Move That Rock!' or he'll be upset. I missed a step and he said it was okay, but I got awful vibrations from his tree for the rest of the day. The worst I've felt yet." _

They did their best, in their own Vadan way. And to be fair, "Move That Rock!" turned out to be an awesome boogaloo—lots of flailing and swinging.

"Purple? What're you doing all the way up there?"

Breaking out of your inventory report, you looked down from the tree branch.

A pair of Spinners stood on the side of the road. Both of them about four feet tall, no real facets in their bodies yet, and impossibly shiny. No buffs or scratches anywhere. Juveniles.

"Thought I'd do some bird watching while the weather's fair." It wasn't a lie. A nest of glass birds sang a few inches from the last explosives, wondering why your metal flaminco didn't chirp back. "And I'm getting things ready for tonight."

"What happens tonight?" The younger ones didn't sing fancy patterns, and usually rhymed the same words together.

"A surprise. A surprise for the dance hall." You rubbed your chin and thought a moment. "Say, I need a favor. Everyone needs to be there when the dance starts; can you put out the call?"

"But tonight's a beach dance, it's still summer," argued the first Spinner.

The second clasped its six-fingered hands together. "Did you finish your ballad, perchance?"

"Mm-hm." You nodded. "It's a real stunner."

_Sapience Levels 3-5: Subjugation or Elimination at Invader's digression.  
No Control Brain or Almighty Tallest approval required. _

Unless someone wanted to watch breakdance operas (nobody did) the Spinners were useless as slaves. If they'd managed a Class 6—and without a military, they couldn't—you could have postponed Final Assessment for a Tallest proposal. Most in-between classifications qualified for proposals, actually, but proposals were only for real Invaders.

No consultations, no requests. You had the final call, based on what you'd seen. You'd seen a moon-wide dance party that had been fun to visit, but proved functionally useless.

Invasion protocol left no room for doubt. It came down to two choices: use them or don't. If the Empire couldn't use them, well. That was that.

**_FINAL ASSESSMENT: _**

_WILDLIFE: NO PRACTICAL USAGE.  
SAPIENT LIFE: SUBJUGATION NOT VIABLE.  
ELIMINATION RECOMMENDED. _

* * *

WEEK 4, NIGHT 23

Final preparations wrapped up in the brooding caves on the opposite side of the Spinner village. Anything in the caves would be doomed anyway, but gutting the whole thing felt safer. You weren't sure what would happen to the aquatic life, but this wasn't a full organic sweep, so not your problem.

By lunchtime, you and your C.I.R. had covered every terrestrial area of Vada IV, with some mild blast range overlap. Choosing which blast to use without totaling the whole moon had been the tricky part. But then, Vada had always been a tricky place.

You'd usually pick your explosives based on what to preserve, but you still didn't know what The Empire wanted with a tiny glowing pointless rock. (If she was so pointless, why did it take you this long for Final Assessment?)

Why send an Elite at the top of his class to a harmless moon stuck in easy mode? An unarmed smeet in bubble wrap could've totaled this place. No predators, no armies, no threats, no real resources, no slaves, no clear purpose at all.

Why would The Almighty Tallest spend all that time, supplies, and energy? She could have performed loyalty tests anywhere. It couldn't just be language data or C.I.R. testing; a scientist could have done that. Spoot, a Vortian could've done that.

You weren't a scientist, a linguist, or a war poet (anymore). You had come as an Invader. Here to observe and subdue. It wasn't your job to decide what The Irken Empire could or couldn't use. It wasn't your place to arrange cannons for organic sweeps. That job belonged to The Tallest, and her alone.

Whatever became of Vada IV and what use could be found with her wasn't your call. You could guess, you could suggest, but nothing else. Your questions were Who, When, Where, What, and How. "Why" breached your rank and height class.

Why invade Vada IV? Because The Tallest told you to do it.

So you arranged the blasts to only eliminate what you knew for sure the Empire didn't need. The sweeps could take care of the rest.

Done. Good job, soldier, go home and have a snack.

And yet.

You still kind of wanted to keep Vada IV the way she was. Of all your stupid ideas, and that had to be the stupidest. It didn't matter what you wanted. It didn't matter what any single Irken wanted. Never did, never would. You wanted, anyway.

You wondered if that was the contagion Tallest Miyuki had warned you about. Maybe the computer misread and the empathy waves went both ways after all. You'd have liked to think so. You'd have liked to blame it on Vada IV tunneling under your skin, but that wasn't true. Not really.

It was just you. It had always been you.

New versions of you always sprouted up with new missions, but this one, though… This guy who called himself Purple and sang and danced with Spinners—this soft, treacherous singer. This insult to the Irken Empire. He couldn't come back with you.

That guy had to die with Vada IV. Tonight.

Because this new guy hadn't just popped out of nowhere. He'd been with you all along and if you let him, he would rot you from the inside out.

Your Tallest had known that before you did. She was very wise.

* * *

The smooth surface gleamed against your boots when you came back home. In the wash of blue-green light, you blended in with the chiming grass and the shadows of the ringing thicket.

She was waning, but even so, Vada IV shone brighter than you could remember since you'd first touched down. You thought it'd be a nice way to remember her, so you told the C.I.R. to get a couple of snapshots before the base went into final lockdown.

Inside the home base, it felt smaller than you remembered. Maybe you'd never taken a good look around before.

You sank into your chair, legs dangling off the armrest, staring into the fronds above the base before the roof closed up for the last time. Barely registering it, you opened a map and watched a holographic mini-cosmos bloom into your hands. You punched in coordinates and waited until the locator zoomed in to locate a planet. Your planet. Home.

It had been a long time since you'd actually just… looked. A long time since you'd seen Irk at all. Tangled up in missions and invader test prep and those times you'd exploded a little bit, there hadn't been much time to remember your home planet.

Not that you'd forgotten. What Irken could?

Vada IV was pretty, but she wasn't beautiful. She wasn't Irk.

Irk was lethal, and oh, She was _gorgeous _. Attended by moons and space stations and satellites and armadas, She twisted in the black of space. Always bright, always awake, always there. The gleaming skin of electric cities rippled across the stone and metals of Her surface. Above, busy schools of ships and cruisers and jets and hover-trains zipped and chased each other between the towers. Beneath the skin, the smeeteries teamed with thousands of baby teeth eager to burst from Her and sink into the necks of lesser worlds—eager to make those worlds worthy of Her.

Irk inhaled war and exhaled life. Your life, and the lives of everyone who ever mattered. Irk labored you, bore you, manufactured every facet of you to be as beautiful as She. Even now, She pulsed and hummed in the warmth of your PAK, in every draw of breath. Irk gave you life, your Tallest, your ship, your skill and ferocity and height. She gave you Red.

Irk didn't sing, but sometimes you could hear her speak.

In that moment, in the dark lightyears away, she said, "Come home. I love you. Come home."

You had heard of shame, but you'd never felt it before. Oh, you knew shame then. You drowned in it.

To think that even for a moment—an awful, ugly moment warped by loneliness and temptation—you'd actually considered not coming home. And to think that you did it in the name of glass birds and dancing...

No. No, that thinking wouldn't help you. It already happened, and you couldn't go backwards.

You were almost done. Just had to finish the exam, and you could go home. (Well, to Devastis. Close enough.)

Okay... Just had to refocus. Eat a donut. Deep breaths. Eat seven more donuts.

Alright.

You good, Purple?

Good. Yeah.

Okay.

Now to review: was Vada IV nice? Yes. Had she given you some of the best days of your life? Yes.

Did you love her? Maybe. Hard to say. "Love" had always been one of those chunky, slippery words. Big and small at the same time. A word meant for ships, snacks, Irk, and really cool explosions. Maybe moons too.

Not that it mattered. You were already in a committed relationship. Pretty as she was, Vada IV was temporary.

Irk is forever, and she always comes first. Always. You may have loved Vada for a while, but you loved Irk far more. You still do, and you always will.

"C.I.R. Initiate command sixteen."

Did she deserve this? That wasn't your call, but… no. No, she didn't. You almost wanted to tell her you were sorry. (After so many lies already, why not one more?) You didn't, though.

"Detonate units five through eight. One, three, and four after that. Tell me when it's done."

Honesty hour started now. All you could do was try and do it gently, and hope she could understand someday.

The C.I.R. shed the flaminco disguise. It finally seemed to understand that it didn't need it anymore. "Units five through eight completed. Units one, three, and four completed."

"Okay, good. Computer, final lockdown mode." Metal clamped and sealed the base. The base lit itself in a low yellow light that reminded you of the smeetery. "Sound shields up. Maximum."

You snapped on your headphones and a visor. "C.I.R., play something nice. You pick."

Pop quiz, cadets: what does it take to kill a planet? Trick question. It depends on the planet. (Or moon. Whatever.)

For this particular moon, it took a lifetime of training. It took patience, research, and integrity. It took courage to live amongst the enemy on their home turf. It took resolve to dig out the lesser parts of you and hold them underwater until they stopped moving.

It took ingenuity to figure out how to keep the land and vegetation intact while cleanly eliminating everything else. It took four weeks to understand that the trees and shrubs tolerated high frequencies easier than the glass birds and Spinners could.

It took two atmospheric resonators launched on opposite sides of the moon. It took forty-four sonic grenades strategically hidden in all the glittering places where living things gathered, slept, danced, nested, swam, and explored.

It took exactly twenty-three minutes and five seconds.

The only thing to do now was wait.

In the meantime, you considered zoos.

It's something that hadn't crossed your mind since that tiny blip of a memory had downloaded into your PAK during those first few minutes of consciousness. It came back now, though. No details, just facts.

Towards the middle of Era 20, Tallest Trels established a zoo containing the last of a doomed planet's species. He even placed it underground, nice and safe under Irk's fearsome surface. Irkens could come and look at them pace around their enclosures. Sometimes, good smeets fed them little pellets on field trips.

When Tallest Feckks took his place in Era 23, her first act had been to eliminate the zoo and all its contents.

When you were five minutes and sixteen seconds old, you'd been horrified. If you'd had more than an eighth of a millisecond to process it, you might have cried about it. It sounded so _mean _.

Over a hundred years later, you now understood that it was just the opposite. It's cruel to keep something alive knowing that it's the last of its kind. If someone goes, they should all go together. Given the choice, you'd rather someone kill you and Red than leave one alive. Not a practical thing to think—dead Irkens helped no one—but it was the truth.

When the clouds parted and the green sky had turned a bruised and luminous shade of red, you fetched a laser from your PAK and took a stroll to see if you could find anything still singing.

* * *

You brushed aside a pile of scattered glass in your path. It had Chipped Shoulder's colors, but in five thousand pieces, who could really tell? Interesting placement, too. Ten yards from your thicket. Whoever it used to be had to be on its way to or from the base. Maybe it came by ahead of time to escort you to the dancehall. Maybe it found the base after lockdown and some base survival instinct had finally kicked in and it ran away. Oh well. You'd never know now.

Far off, you could hear waves lapping against the shore. You walked to the crunch of your own boots and the clinking little footsteps of the C.I.R. Nothing else.

While your unit took final inventory and analysis, you stole glances through the windows. Most of the dwellings were empty, and the ones that weren't had glass piled in the beds or at the doors. You found some remains near the escape routes, but as expected, you found the most shards inside the dancehall. Almost all of them had come.

Looking closely at the positions, you could see how close they'd danced together. Disco night, maybe. Your favorite.

"Hey, you have a final reading yet?" Your voice echoed.

"Let's see." The unit's display popped up. "Geo-organic lifeforms at one-percent!"

Something bright flashed through the rusting grass and rose into the sky. Your laser shattered the bird in mid-flight. It was a pretty good shot, in your opinion.

"Zero-percent. Final exam complete! Congratulations, Master!" The C.I.R. played a tinny jingle and shot an Irken flag out of its merry little cranium. You didn't ask where the flagpole came from.

"Hey, since when do you play music?"

"Oh, it's just the victory jingle. But you might like to know that I've recorded over two thousand unique songs since our landing date as part of my information gathering protocol. Nifty, huh?"

It was, actually. "Gimmie a copy of that when we get back to _The Famished _.

The flag went up at the landing site, next to your boot print and a dead frog with no eyes. You watched the flag droop lifeless without any wind.

After a moment, you smiled.

You'd had it wrong this whole time. Vada IV was never your host, and you weren't her guest. You weren't her friend or part of her ensemble, and you certainly weren't her smeet. You didn't belong to her; she belonged to _you _. Vada IV and all her songs, beaches, and Spinners were yours to break or build at your leisure. You were an Irken who appreciated his leisure.

But eventually, all Irkens had to go back to work. You, especially. Bigger, better things awaited you than a dead moon in Meekrob's backyard. Besides, she wasn't really yours, she was The Empire's. How they decided to graft Vada IV to Irk's body wasn't your business.

In an unrelated matter, you threw up in the sand before you left. Maybe that donut frosting didn't agree with you.


	4. You Can Never Come Home Again, Idiot

It's been said that there are two kinds of Irken Invaders: the ones who can't wait to come home, and the ones who can't wait to leave.

For as long as you could remember, you'd thought that you were the latter. And why not?

Staying at home meant staying still, and staying still was for smeets, drones, researchers, and anyone else who couldn't or wouldn't keep up with the military. The peaceful in-betweens of hanging around between missions were kind of like a fresh box of donuts. Awesome, no doubt, but if you let it sit in the open doing nothing for too long, the whole thing got stale and went to waste. Life needed movement—explosions and exploring and lasers and stars and roaring engines and blasting the wet guts out of all those wild, spooky places you'd never seen before. Home was boring, everywhere else was fun.

For the most part, all of that had remained true after your time on Vada. Here's the trick, though: all those juicy, chewy, delicious off-world adventures had happened as part of a team. Part of an Us. Irk stretched wider than the planet itself, to the conquered territories and ships and wherever else Irk's smeets implanted themselves.

Irkens found their Us wherever they found other Irkens, even the drones, even the shorties. The Us was home, and you'd never_ really _left home until your final exam.

As the dust of Devastis kicked and swirled under _The Famished, _it struck you that you were, and always had been, an Invader who wanted to come home. Of all the things you'd learned during your final exam, that had to be the biggest.

How could the other Invaders stand to be away from everyone for so long? You had no idea what you'd do all alone for months or even years with only a robot and your computer for real company. Did they just call home all the time? Maybe real Invaders got to come home for breaks?

You'd never really thought about it before, and wondered if you could ask The Tallest about it after checking in. You could ask about a lot of things. Miyuki personally assigned Vada IV, so it only made sense for her to take your final report, too. Hopefully, you wouldn't have to wait long.

As the ship landed, two glossy green discs caught the light. The C.I.R. couldn't compress all two-thousand eight-hundred eight seven audio files very well, so it had to use two entire discs. It had apologized for that right before you'd dropped it off to Research on your flight to the landing dock. The little robot waved at you all the way up the deposit tube. Good riddance.

Without the clink-clank of metal feet or the constant hum of an additional processor, _The Famished _grew eerily quiet. It would have been a perfect excuse to check out the Vada music files, but… nah.

The discs went back into PAK storage, safe between the breathing apparatus and your back-issues of _Snack Foods Of The Tall & Towering_. You didn't know for certain if you had clearance to keep those files, but nobody'd said you couldn't. That counted as a yes in your logs. If nobody found out, they couldn't say no. It also meant that you had forever to thumb through all the files—no telling how long they all were. The songs could be anywhere between five seconds and fifty days. Eventually, you'd go through all of them.

But not today. It felt… weird to do it today.

The rusty battle-scarred scent of Devastis smashed you full in the face as your boots hit the ground. Metal, dirt, disinfectant, and pheromones, with the slightest touch of blood. Good to be back. Good to finally smell something besides salt and sugar.

It wasn't your job to make sense of stuff, and you didn't want to. You'd already seen firsthand what came from thinking too much. It'd have been for the best to not think about it at all.

Easier said than done. That dumb little moon stuck to your soles wherever you went, like marshmallow filling—squishy and sweet and sticking to everything in big messy strings you couldn't shake off no matter how hard you tried.

Except marshmallow goop washed off eventually, while Vada IV's little tunes hummed through your head all throughout decontamination. Not always loud and usually incomplete, but still there. There in the autoclave. There through the physical evaluations. There in the warm and cozy chalk baths.

If you remembered to stay respectful and didn't barf your words all over the place, maybe you could ask Tallest Miyuki about that, too. She'd understand what was going on. She'd know. She knew everything; that's why she was Tallest.

The strangest part of coming home after a long absence was the way everything shifted around while staying in the same place. The same but… not. Nothing changed in the walls or tubing or wires or drones or vestibules. Nothing had changed about you, either—despite just passing finals and needing a fresh encoding—but still not quite the same.

But as you moved out of Decontamination and into the arrival halls, you realized it wasn't just the usual weirdness of coming back.

Something about Devastis didn't feel right today. The planet felt drowsy.

It felt… _still. _Stagnant.

By definition as a military training planet, Devastis shifted in constant flux. At any given moment of any given day, one found recruits, mortuary carts, medical drones, service drones, mechanical drones, graduates, incoming and outgoing squadrons, equipment deliveries, impromptu games of droneball, and the lunch rush all trading places and clambering over each other to get where they needed to be. Not today.

None of the guards or 'bots in security had mentioned anything about a lockdown or any emergencies. No notice of assembly on any of the info screens. So where'd everyone gone?

Instead of an arrivals bay bustling with fellow dusty-clean Elites and commanders fresh from decontamination, you found only a couple dozen Irkens. Even weirder, most of them didn't seem to notice you. A knot of smallers pressed together, speedwalking against the wall with their antennae low and twitchy. A commander from Unit 743 gnawed a few Sugar Stix with one of his PAK legs curled and half-extended like it'd gotten stuck halfway out. He didn't seem to notice.

Come to think of it, had you seen anyone else behind you in line for the chalk baths? Or on the landing pad? You couldn't remember any, but maybe you just hadn't noticed. The smallers were easy to miss with a line of sight so high.

In the quiet, you heard the familiar scrapes and clinks of metal on metal. The sound of PAK legs skittering double—no, triple-time through the connection tubes, broken up by big gaps of silence in-between. Not pauses, but leaping jumps to close the distance.

_Skitter-skitter-jump. _

Someone was coming.

_Skitter-skitter-jump. _

And fast.

_Skitter-skitter-jump. _

You braced. Devastis couldn't be under attack, right? Nobody could be that stupid, for one, and for another, if it was an attack, you'd have known about it hours before your ship breached the atmosphere. The air would have been active. You'd have seen everyone everywhere, and you'd have been with them, running on your way to slash something in half.

_Skitter-skitter-jump. Jump! Jump! Skitter-skitter-skitter. _

Actually, eviscerating something sounded pretty good right then. No better way to blow off steam than a round or five in the arena. It'd be good to look into after you found—

"Purple! I knew I heard somebody slacking off somewhere around here."

And there he was, the same as you'd left him: arrogant, lethal, and confident, with height to match. The only one who'd ever seen you eye-to-eye. It almost hurt to see him, you'd missed him so much. The gangly know-it-all strolled through the arrivals hull real casual-like, with his hands in his pockets and a lopsided smirk on his face. The illusion would have been perfect if he didn't breathe so hard. Or if you hadn't caught Red's PAK legs retracting as you'd turned around.

Red coughed into his fist and sniffed. "So, what, did you sneak off to get more snacks?" He tried to hide his smile, but it broke out of him anyway. "Poki said you weren't supposed to be back for another week."

You'd meant to say something clever or cutting, something smooth to match your newly earned Invader encoding. It didn't come out that way. "Eh, finished early, I guess." To make up for it, you rocked back on your heels with a grin that you meant but didn't really feel. "Another week, really?"

"At least." Red's antennae perked and twitched as he looked you over. "When the guys in our squad saw your kill count jump up by a couple thousand, I figured something big went down, but I didn't think you were _done _done."

A couple thousand? It had felt like more than that. You shrugged again. "It's a small moon."

Antennae still twitching, Red drew back with a frown. "Yeesh, Plurps. You look like you just stepped out of an interrogation sim. What'd they _do _to you out there?" He smelled the air. "And why do you smell like cupcake smoothies?"

"Nothing, compared to what I gave 'em back. I'm fine." To prove it, you started walking. Walking to where, you didn't know yet. It didn't matter, so long as you were moving. Everything was too damn_ still _around here. "I just—it's weird, that's all."

"What is?"

"The whole thing. Being out there alone. Spending all that alone time in my own brain… places. I didn't really like it." Your fingers wriggled and clenched, trying to find the words. What was the point of all that vocabulary data when you couldn't even use it? "It's different and… weird."

Red nodded solemnly. "Yeah, I bet being in your head's pretty lonely. Lots of empty space." For flavor, he gave you a welcome-back punch in the shoulder.

You returned it. "Thanks, I missed you too."

"Psh, I don't know what you're—"

"Oh, okay. I guess you just _happened _to run all the way across half the planet and you _just happened _to be in arrivals when I dropped in."

Apparently, he'd forgotten that you caught sound like a monitor dish. Red took a sudden interest in the stains decorating the walls as you both passed through the walkway hubs leading into the mess hall. "I like my exercise. It's called training, genius, ever heard of it?"

"Yeah, I have." In one smooth motion, you pivoted to walk backwards and stare Red right in his big fat lying face of lies. You grinned, for real this time. "So how come you made your PAK do all the work instead of your real legs?"

Red opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"HA!"

Who needed the moon? The last ten minutes beat the last four weeks of Vada dances by a landslide. What came before didn't matter, and whatever happened after you became a full Invader didn't matter either. Not yet, not now. That was Future Purple's problem, and that guy wasn't here yet.

All that mattered was now, as You and Him grafted together to become your own specialized Us. The way it's always meant to be. Finally, you had both arms back.

Red leaned against a window, side-eyeing an approaching Elite Larb's ice cream sandwich. He tilted his head, probably debating the effort of snatching the snack versus the effort of keeping it without accidentally squishing it into inedible goop. "By the way, how'd you do on the exam?"

Larb caught on to him before he got to close and changed course. He also ate his ice cream sandwich in one bite. Twerp.

"No idea. Guess I've gotta wait until—"

Your gauntlets beeped in sync.

Not just yours and Red's. It was everyone's.

Looking up, you discovered a room of flashing white lights and chirping beeps and perplexed Irkens. Some of them looked at each other. Some of them—Larb included—stopped and looked at you, instead. You were the tallest in the room, so you must have known something, right?

A gathering of Irkens assembled around a large monitor in the wall, watching the daily scroll of high-scores, body counts, and casualties. Or rather, the lack of one. You couldn't read from this distance, but you knew the scroll had stopped moving.

The little crowd slowly amassed into a big one.

You began to say something about it, but Red beat you to the punch.

He pointed out the window at one of the nearby landing docks. "Hey, look." Red's voice crouched low. Nervous. "The ships just changed."

You looked for yourself. Indeed, every single ship, from the spittle runners to the transport carts had gone from a deep imperial blue to generic grey. "Maybe… maybe it's a glitch?"

A new scroll crawled across the monitors, large enough to be seen even at this distance. It was just two lines:

_ALMIGHTY TALLEST MIYUKI CONFIRMED DEAD. STANDBY FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. _

"No, Purple. I don't think it is."

* * *

Warmth radiated from the Control Brain like an open wound. The great shell around her resembled a supersized PAK crossed with a honeycomb: an immense, swollen, pulsating thing engorged with glowing eyelets and veiny wires. The Brain consumed more than half the room, and although she had no visible eyes, you knew that she had been watching you before you'd even stepped into the chamber. Maybe even before that.

She offered no greetings, no familiarities, no acknowledgment at all, save for two simple instructions.

**"ENTER, IRKEN ELITE PURPLE ****_8C33B5_**** . REMAIN STILL." **

Before you had time to process the words, the ground rushed out from under you. Cables snaked out of the walls and into your PAK. Everything below your neck went limp and lifeless. Your body didn't feel like your body. Just a head sewn onto a long dangling strip of meat. It vaguely occurred to you that you were being lifted into the air. You must have been, because the ground had suddenly gone away.

You had never seen a Control Brain before, and you didn't know yet to be afraid of her. Curious, yes. Intimidated, absolutely. But not afraid. Irkens didn't get scared—especially not of their own, with the possible exception of a Tallest.

Waves of data too small and quick and dense to read flashed on a nearby display. Data about you, probably. Hopefully good stuff.

The news about Miyuki had dropped an hour ago. Too soon to have a new Tallest, or even know who the new one would be. For the first time in over six-hundred years, the Empire did not have an Almighty Tallest. _You _didn't have a Tallest. (It was an awful thought, and you did your best not to think of it. Your best was not enough.)

You did, however, have a Control Brain. It wasn't the same thing, but close enough, right? Commander Poki said that the Devastis Brain processed most of the military evaluations and training, including all final exams.

The bubbling sticky residue in your guts hadn't gone away. It had calmed down when you were with Red, but the second he'd left it came rolling back louder and bigger than before. Growing by the millisecond. It felt like it could bubble out of your mouth and burn the planet alive, smelling like the sugary wind over Vada's beach. Songs of the moon looped on repeat, worse than the earworm parasites they used in Information Extraction.

Though you didn't have a lot of personal experience, you knew what guilt and shame felt like. This wasn't that. Not regret, either. Aside from that one moment of hesitation, you weren't sorry about anything you'd done on Vada IV. But you still felt sorry that it had happened. How those two things went together, you had no clue.

Until today, you'd had no clue your Tallest could die, either. Dying happened to other Tallest in other Eras. Not yours. Nothing was supposed to be stronger than Miyuki. If something had taken her down, what did that mean for everyone else? The bubbling awfulness pressed hard against your throat. You swallowed it back down.

"Hey." You blinked, squinting in the Brain's green glow. "Am I okay?"

"**YOUR PERFORMANCE IS ABOVE AVERAGE. EXAM COMPLETION: 7.6 DAYS BEFORE EARLIEST ESTIMATE. INVASION'S DATA EXTRACTION: ACCEPTABLE. EMPIRE FIDELITY SUSTAINED EXCEPTIONALLY." **The Pass/Fail sign below the monitor lit a cheerful, clinical green. " **YOU HAVE PASSED."**

Not exactly the S++ you'd hoped for, but a passed exam was a passed exam. So… yay. If you'd had any sensation in your spaghetti arms you might have applauded yourself. (Somebody had to.)

"Oh, good." Hopefully that hadn't sounded ungrateful. "Okay, but uh… Am _I _like… _okay_? Ever since I came back, it feels all… not-normal on the inside. And sticky. You know?"

The Control Brain's glow pulsed. "**PAK #8C33B5 IS FUNCTIONING NORMALLY. DECONTAMINATION REPORTS NO INFESTATION, ILLNESS, OR SUSTAINED PHYSICAL TRAUMA. MENTAL ANALYSES ARE NORMAL FOR A RETURNED MISSION. EMPATHETICS INCREASED BY 54.7% COINCIDING WITH FLUCTUATING EMOTIONAL SPIKES. YOU ARE NORMAL****_._**"

"Normal?"

**"THAT'S WHAT WE SAID."**

Literally nothing about this felt anything close to normal. "Are you _sure _?"

"**WE DO NOT MAKE MISTAKES, IRKEN ELITE PURPLE. TEMPORARY ATTACHMENT TO FOREIGN INHABITANTS OR TERRITORIES IS NOT UNCOMMON, AND DISCOVERED IN ONE IN SIX INVADERS. MORE OFTEN IN IRKENS WITH HIGH SENSITIVITY OR EMPATHY READINGS. YOU POSSESS BOTH." **The Brain paused, perhaps waiting for your sigh of relief. " **DID WE NOT REPORT EXCEPTIONALLY SUSTAINED EMPIRE FIDELITY?**"

"No, you did. Good to know, I guess." And it explained being sent to a moon full of empaths. Specialized targets for a specialized Elite.

It still sounded like a lot of trouble for no reason, though. Irkens didn't keep what they didn't need, but last you checked, empathy didn't win battles or take planets. If anything, it was a pointless hold-up.

You tried to turn your head to look at your PAK, but your neck didn't have the strength. "Shouldn't we have deleted that sort of thing by now? What's it good for?" Besides making things complicated and weird.

"**EMPATHY BENEFITS IN INFORMATION EXTRACTION AND TARGETING EMOTIONAL WEAK POINTS. IT IS HARMLESS IN MODERATION, PROVIDED THAT IT IS NOT MADE A HABIT. WE ARE SATISFIED WITH YOUR PERFORMANCE ON VADA IV."** The Control Brain paused, as if in consideration. After a moment, she added, " **COULD YOU DO IT AGAIN, IF PROMPTED?**"

"Oh, totally."

"**GOOD.**"

Slowly, feeling came back to your shoulders, seeping down through your spine all the way to your feet. The cables went slack, detached, and dropped you.

"Waugh!" Scrambling and flailing, you barely managed to land on your feet. "You know, some warning next time would be nice."

"**WE SUGGEST THAT YOU PARTAKE IN A REST PERIOD. FOLLOW POST-INFORMATION EXTRACTION EXERCISE PROCEDURES** ." The chamber doors opened. " **THAT IS ALL, ELITE**."

"Why do you keep calling me an Elite? I should be encoded as an Invader, right?" The pieces were there but they couldn't quite come together. Your 'spooch understood the situation before you did, and it warped and twisted in on itself. "I passed my final exam."

"**CORRECT**," the Brain told you. **"AN EXAM ADMINISTERED BY A DECEASED TALLEST**."

One last line of data crawled beneath your exam result: "_ RESULTS VOIDED _."

"Oh, you have GOT to be shi—"

**"REPORT FOR DUTY IN THIRTY-EIGHT HOURS. YOU ARE DISMISSED, ELITE. CONGRATULATIONS ON PASSING."**

* * *

Devastis was grounded. You couldn't bluff or bribe your way out of the atmosphere this time. No sneaking out in a stream of other ships, either. If not for your rank and height, you might not have been allowed to land at all. Everyone off-planet had either been called back or stranded upon the last rock they'd been assigned to.

A planet full of Irkens packed together with nowhere to be and nothing to do meant a planet starved for a distraction. Something to watch. Something to talk about. Before you'd left the Control Brain's chamber, word had spread throughout the central hub and beyond: the golden-egg of the Irken Elite had come back from his mysterious assignment early, acting strangely and smelling like kolbaberry cupcakes. Where the kolbaberry part came from, you didn't know.

Great clusters of smallers huddled together in the metal rafters of every hallway, atrium, and cafeteria. A wriggling, squirming mass of shadows and blinking eyes and wiggling antennae watched and whispered above you, positioned too high for an easy attack. The smarter ones (or the stealthier ones, same difference) knew better than to give their position away, but you could still sense them.

You sensed them as you paced around the refurbishment facilities searching for an empty couch and a chance to use your nap pass.

You sensed them in the arena while you argued with the Gamemaster over downtime hours, who outranked who, and who could scoop whose heart out with a dessert spoon if they didn't open the arena right this second.

You even sensed them in the data storage buildings. Nobody besides records drones, robots, and the odd commander ever frequented data storage. Located half a mile from the Brain, the trip there took too long and wasn't worth wasting one's precious few leisure minutes. That day, your fellow tallers packed the place, harassing the drones and idly skimming old files. You noticed Commander Poki among them, and she was the only one who didn't turn to watch as you ghosted the building.

You could've just kicked someone off a couch or whatever, but that meant doing stuff. Doing stuff got attention, attention meant more talking, and talking was the opposite of sleeping.

Every courtyard full. Every walkway cramped. The air rolled thick and hot with PAK vents and nobody would shut up and eyes blinked everywhere and you just needed to sit. You needed space and missed the wide-open nothing of Vada IV's lake and thinking of the lake made everything twenty times worse.

With the planet closed, there was only one place almost guaranteed to be empty. In the end, you retreated—not ran, not hid, _retreated _—to the loading docks and nestled between the cold grey hulls of _The Famished _and _The Lenient_.

"Treat it like a post-extraction exercise," The Brain had said. In other words, hole up somewhere safe and rest until your brain puts itself back together. It had been over a year since your last information extraction sim (the one with the shattered spine and lung spiders) and you'd already forgotten all your old recovery spots. Not that it mattered; on a day like today, all of them had been snatched up by now.

It would've been smarter and easier to recover in your own quarters, but you didn't live there alone. Red would come. He'd ask questions, and no matter how you answered, those questions would just lead to more questions and… yeah, no thanks.

_The Famished _would naturally be the second choice. A far better option than your quarters, you could lock it because you actually owned it. Irkens rented, used, and borrowed, but even in the higher encodings, they rarely_ owned _anything. The essentials were assigned to you. Stuff to buy were usually consumables—snacks, nap-vouchers, and stuff—or body-mods, assuming one's encoding allowed it. Owning something to_ keep _applied almost exclusively to ships that one had bought or built themselves. That was why ships got to have names.

That day, _The Famished _didn't feel much like yours. All the color had literally gone out of her and wouldn't come back until they announced a new Tallest. The inside still looked the same, but no sooner than you'd settled in your seat, the scent of Vada IV chased you back out. Which was stupid.

No, worse than stupid. It was pathetic.

There you were: tallest of the tallers, an elite among elites, the vicious and notorious star of Devastis. Six feet and ten inches tall, and every single centimeter balled up and cringing beside your own ship because it smelled like a moon full of broken glass.

And for no good reason! At least the information extraction simulations gave you something to be upset about. Come to think of it, you hadn't even needed a recoup from your last sim. Getting snapped into thirty-eight and a half pieces? Whatever. Ooooh, but look out for those spooky frosting smells and disco beats. Better hide like a smeet on Horrible Painful Overload Day.

The exam had ended. You didn't need the moon anymore, so you did what everyone does with stuff they don't need. You gathered up the last four weeks and began to put it in the Box, along with Overload Day, the nastier interrogation sims, that time you dropped your slushie on Sirus Minor, and everything else you couldn't carry but couldn't ditch. Perhaps you could use it someday. Pull Vada IV out of the Box like a cool hat and wear it if you found yourself in a tight spot and needed to dig up some sympathy points from some bleeding heart morons before you shot 'em in the eye.

It should have been a snap.

But even with her singing in your head the whole way home, you hadn't expected memories of such a tiny place to be so _big_. Vada IV had died quietly, but her ghost went into storage kicking and screaming, bearing broken glass teeth. What kind of a stupid backwards place started fighting_ after _eradication?

It would still fit in the Box, even if it took a little work. It had to. Everything fit if you tried hard enough.

But the timing was all wrong. Receiving the news about Miyuki kept refreshing itself in your head. It slammed you from above while Vada IV still gnawed your entrails, and you couldn't handle a double attack. It wasn't fair. Your Tallest stood so, _SO _much bigger than Vada, and would be even harder to fit in the Box. If she even could.

Maybe if you rethought it. Tried a little harder, moved some stuff around, stomped your thoughts down, that could—

Red jumped down from The Lenient's roof. "There you are!" He landed hard in front of you, half-crouched on the tarmac and backlit by the sallow glow of landing lights. One hand on his hip and the other curled around his chin, Red squinted down at you like an engine that wouldn't turn. "You," he declared, "are being weird. Weirder than usual."

The wall pressed against your PAK. This was not supposed to happen. Not now. It was too soon. You'd barely even started on The Box. Blindsided and raw, you tried to remember how words worked. "What? I-I'm not—"

"You're gonna tell me why, and then you're going to quit being weird, and then you're going to go back to normal." Even bent over, he had height on you.

Knew it, too.

"Okay. First of all, those mean the same thing." Without breaking eye contact, you shifted into a crouch. "Second of all, you're not my commander; you don't tell me what to do."

No good walking out with him blocking the path between your ships. You considered trying to shove your way through, but in that narrow space with your rotten positioning, it wouldn't have worked. The only way out was up.

"I can do whatever I want, it's none of your business and anyway there's nothing to tell because I am NOT being weird!" Legs sprang from your PAK. With one push, you skittered up and over The Famished's hull.

Red caught one boot in his hand and your other boot in the face. "Oh no you don't—ow! OW!" He ducked before your heel got him in the eye. "Quit kicking me, you weirdo!"

"Let go of my leg, then!" You kicked again, but he just dug his claws in deeper. "Since when are you this clingy? What happened to 'Invaders work alone,' huh? What happened to 'we're temporary'? _I'm _minding my own business—you're the one creeping around stalking people, you—you creepy... creep guy! Get off my boot and go away. I've got stuff to do."

"Liar." Clinging to your boot for leverage, Red sank his claws into your leggings and pulled himself up. His own PAK legs scraped the sides of the ship, quickly closing the gap between you. "The whole Empire's in recess—nobody's got stuff to do. That's why you're not in the arena right now. Tenn told me you were poking around there after you came back from the Control Brain." He narrowed his eyes. "Since when do you have arena fights without me?"

"For someone who didn't miss me, you sure are obsessed. Maybe I wanna be alone sometimes, Red, ever think of that? Maybe I got used to being by myself and I don't need a schmoopy fuss-blister holding my hand all the time." The metal leg pierced Red's glove. It reared back, struck again, and this time hit flesh.

Red flinched backward and spat a long strain of curses. The hand released your leg.

You skittered to the roof of the ship. The high ground taken, you hissed back at him for the sake of hissing. The entry hatch was at arm's length. One more step and you were home free. Just slip in, lock the hatch, and let Red be a nosy stupid jerk all by himself.

The hatch cracked open.

Wait. Wasn't there a reason you didn't—

Too late.

Scents of sugar and salt and dancehalls and lakeshores and little glass birds roared out of _The Lenient_. Stronger than before. It knocked you off your feet. Your legs didn't want to work, not even to kick the hatch closed again. You couldn't go inside, you couldn't leave the hangar, you couldn't go_ anywhere _and Red just wouldn't_ leave_!

Everything inside you twisted crooked, trying to push up and out of you. Like bile, but worse.

A hand slammed down hard on the roof. Another hand followed it. Slowly, Red dragged himself up, smearing pink bloody handprints in the ship's grey paint. He growled and sniffed the air. The murderous light faded from his eyes as something clicked. Glancing between you and the open hatch, he nodded to himself. "You failed the exam, didn't you?"

"Hey, shut up!"

Red brightened and relaxed. "That IS it, isn't it?" He hadn't said it to taunt you or to be mean. "_ That's _why you're all gunked up and squeeby." No, he was_ relieved_. Relieved that he'd figured it all out because you were just_ so _easy to figure out, weren't you? Well, _of course _Purple went out all by himself and failed—gosh, it was _so_ obvious.

"I didn't," you quietly said.

He didn't hear you, or he didn't want to. "Something happened on the moon and messed up your test, so now you—"

Your laser fired once.

The smoking ring burned blue in the wall, pulsing and tinged with ash. Inches above Red's shoulder. A warning shot. Red blinked at it, then you.

Still sprawled across the warm roof of your ship, you glared back at him. The bile built up again. It clogged your throat until it hurt to breathe. "I passed. You jerk."

Anyone smart would have left, then. Only an idiot would've stuck around after almost getting shot in the face. People have said that between the two of you, Red was the smart one. People didn't know Red very well. "If you passed, then what's the problem?"

If only he'd dropped in a few minutes later. If only you'd heard him coming and found a better hiding spot. You tried once more to shove Vada IV and your Tallest into the Box, but they still wouldn't fit and you couldn't do it with Red still staring at you with his big stupid face. He wouldn't go away. Even after you'd almost shot him, he still wouldn't go away, and honestly, you didn't really want him to. Or maybe you did. You didn't know anymore.

The bile bulged and simmered in your throat. "The Tallest gave me that test. I didn't come back until after she'd…"

If you hadn't wasted so much time mooning over dances and songs, if you'd just done your stupid job and come right back a week earlier, you'd have made it in time. But then, that had been the point of the whole thing, right? From the start, Miyuki had known you'd hesitate. It had just been a question of how long.

Red closed the hatch and took a seat on top of it. "Oh." His frown deepened. "Ohh, and so now the exam doesn't—"

"Yeah." You tried to laugh it off, but the sound leaked out all mangled and soft. "I told you, it's stupid to make plans. They all just fall apart in the end."

You'd told Miyuki that too, after…

_"You've become quite accustomed to each other. It's a cute gimmick, but I wonder what you intend to do once you graduate." _

Right after she'd indirectly asked you about Red. In fact, most of that meeting had been about Red. And right after that, she'd sent you to a moon stuffed with things you didn't know that you liked. To see which mattered more to you: some trivial temporary personal attachment or your Empire.

A little worried for the answer, you looked at Red again. "Why'd you come all the way out here?"

He shrugged. "You came back not like you. All quiet and… light-less. I wanted to know why."

You thought of the last time you'd tried to hide away and mind your own business.

_"If you can't go out, I'll stay here with you." _

It hadn't worked then, either.

**_"WE ARE SATISFIED WITH YOUR PERFORMANCE," _**The Brain had told you. _"_**_COULD YOU DO IT AGAIN, IF PROMPTED?"_**

For another planet? Another Vada IV? Yes.

That was the difference between Elites and Invaders. Elites killed the Him and Her, the Them and It. Invaders killed the Us. Killed it, burned the body, salted the soil, and built a snack bar on top.

Could you kill someone else's Us? Absolutely.

But could you kill _your _Us? Could you cut your own arm off and not expect it to grow back?

Red started to stand up. "Hey, if you really want me to go, I could just—"

"No." Your hand caught Red's uniform and clenched hard. "I don't care if you didn't miss me, I still missed you. I'm sick of missing you, and I don't want to do it anymore."

Sick in more ways than one. The burning sludge in your guts swelled upwards and pressed hard against your throat and eyes. Pressed so hard your vision began to blur.

You'd held onto your Box too long. This whole time you'd been holding it, trying to stuff the loss of Vada IV and Tallest Miyuki inside. They were too big, too much to hold anymore.

"Uh. Red?"

"Yeah?"

"Gimmie a towel. I'm… I'm gonna be gross for a second."

The Box was too heavy. You dropped it.

You dropped your Box and everything, everything, _EVERYTHING_ spilled out of you like a slug gutted sideways. A wet, slimy, heaving mess all over the floor, right there for everyone to see.

The Irken Elite didn't drop their Boxes. Tallers didn't cry.

But there was _so much _in there—Vada IV and Miyuki and a hundred and thirty-four years' worth of other stuff. Stuff you'd forgotten about until now. And it wouldn't stop coming.

If Red had sneered and stalked away in disgust, you wouldn't have blamed him. He didn't, though.

Instead, he sat back down with his gangly knees pulled up to his chin and waited for a while. When your eyes stopped barfing liquids all over the place, he gave you the towel and scooted closer. "Do you think you're done being gross, or is this just intermission?"

"Um." You wiped off the shiny gore of tears and snot, coughed into the towel and waited. No bile in your throat. Squeedlyspooch ached a little. Your old PAK fans hissed hot, working overtime to compensate for the emotional overload. "No, I think I'm done. You want your towel back?"

Red squinted at the dripping towel. "Uh. That's okay, you keep it."

He leaned forward, resting his cheek on his knee. For a time, he gazed at the lines of grey ships in the grey loading dock. His droopy antennae twitched when he sighed. "Yeah," he said. "I miss my Tallest, too. But on the bright side…" Red reached into his own PAK, pulled out two boxes of pocky, and tossed you one. "The snack ban's over."

The pink pocky stick gleamed dully in the light. You sniffed it and nipped off the pink frosted tip. "Huh, watermelon. Not bad."

The both of you ate in silence.

By the time you reached the bottom of the box of pocky, your own Box had finally closed. Freshly organized and locked good and tight, nobody besides the two of you would ever know it had opened at all.

Red stood up and cracked his spine. "We've still got thirty-four hours before we're back on duty. You gonna take a nap?"

A nap did sound good. Ripping some uppity twerp off a couch they didn't deserve and claiming your proper place sounded even better. "Maybe later. Right now, I'm kinda in the mood for training. ...Shut up, don't give me that look."

"I didn't say anything!"

"Your face did." You stood, stretched your legs, and walked a small circle around _The Famished _'s entrance hatch. A series of patterned little steps, kind of like… "Huh."

Red cocked a brow. "What's that grin about?"

You stalked towards him and took a bow. "C'mere, I want to show you something I learned on the moon."

He squinted at your stance. "…You're not gonna do that creepy singing thing, are you?"

"I will if you keep whining. No, I wanna try out some hand-to-hand moves, but they work better with a partner."

"Don't we need weapons for that?"

"That's the neat thing about it!" With a flourish, you bounced and swept around him. "You don't need weapons or anything. Music helps, but it works fine without it. It's an athletic thing and you can do it without even touching, see?"

Red drew back, instinctively trying to keep you in sight. He went back, you went forward. You fell away, he followed. The steps and movements had a pattern to it, and soon the two of you matched step for step. Red faked to the right and shimmied up to catch you. "Interesting. What do they call it?"

Too slow! The legs of your PAK bent and pirouetted out of reach. You grinned over Red's shoulder. "A dance."

"Sounds dumb."

You laughed. "_You're _dumb."


End file.
